


Seize Your Happy Ending

by Engineer104



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ...also in just one scene (or so), Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Blood, Childhood Friends, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hallucinations, Happy Ending, Headaches & Migraines, Implied Sexual Content, Lance has a weird sleep schedule don't ask, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Non-Graphic Violence, Sickfic, Witch Curses, also in one scene, in one scene, kinda??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 05:49:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17575022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: Once upon a time in a quiet farming village, there lived an adventurous boy that longed for glory borne of heroic deeds. Once upon a time deep in a forest, there lived a lonely girl that tended her garden whilst wishing to be free.And both find adventure and a friend in an unexpected place...





	Seize Your Happy Ending

**Author's Note:**

> my thanks and appreciation to [Rueitae](https://rueitae.tumblr.com/) for beta reading (and soothing my general pre-posting paranoia)!!
> 
> i wrote most of this before season eight and the part i wrote after...should be quite obvious lol ~~first person to guess gets a cookie~~
> 
> oh boy i've never posted such a long one-shot before. in any case, cavities guaranteed or your money back (because this fic is super duper sappy) <3

He’s only a boy when he loses his way in the forest after sunset, every lichen-stained tree trunk resembling the last in the near dark. The light of the full moon outlines each fresh spring leaf in white, but this deep in the woods and this distant from the village, Lance can’t find his bearings.

Until the gaps between trees widen and he emerges onto a clearing.

A warm yellow light - like the candle his sister reads by when their parents are asleep - draws him in. A glass window distorts it from a single flame to a blur of color, and in the deep shadows a small, round cabin stands.

Lance’s heart jumps into his throat when the cabin’s door opens with a creak of hinges. He ducks behind a tree at the edge of the clearing, his eyes wide and the moss-covered bark slimy under his fingertips.

A girl close to his age, hair barely brushing her shoulders, steps out. A wicker basket hangs from her wrist, a trowel and a pair of leather gloves poking out and the door swinging shut behind her. She crouches, her head disappearing under the fence bordering a garden while a gentle clinking disrupts the eerie silence.

Lance wonders if the girl - surely she doesn’t live alone in that cabin? - can direct him back to his village or even give him shelter for the night. His eyes droop with exhaustion - how long has he been wandering in search of the familiar path back home? - but he forces his feet forward despite a prickle of discomfort.

His hand is halfway to the garden gate when a hoarse voice calls from within the cabin:

_“Girl, attend me!”_

Lance freezes. The girl rises, the hem of her dress rising when she spins and flashing a glint of metal encircling her ankle, and ducks beneath the gate.

He doesn’t release the air trapped in his lungs until the door clicks shut.

He stands, peering over the fence at the neat rows of plants only just poking out of the soil with fresh spring growth. Small yellow flowers already dot a few vines - tomatoes or cucumbers or squash, he guesses - and a trellis thick with glossy green leaves unleashes a sweet smell from its delicate white blooms. Thick green moss coats the interior of the fence except where more vines with those glossy leaves and white flowers crawl over it. Another creeper with wide leaves like a maple tree’s climbs a pillar at the corner of the small cabin’s smaller porch.

Smoke rises from the chimney, faintly illuminated in moonlight. A shiver wracks his body, and he hunches his shoulders against a sudden cool breeze.

Spring it may be, but cold still rules by night.

But inside the cabin a warm fire awaits him…

Lance sets his shoulders and pushes the garden gate open. He winces when their hinges creak, halting without taking another step into the garden, but when nothing changes - not even the candle shining in the window flickers - he carries on.

His shoes sink into soft, rich soil, leaving footprints behind, but he finds a stone path that leads to the porch and walks up to the cabin door.

But he hesitates with his hand raised to knock.

The warmth emanating from the cabin tempts him, tries to coax him, but something - perhaps the unfamiliarity, the suddenness of the cabin’s appearance, the _croak_ and hostile tone of the woman that called the girl inside - stops him in his tracks.

But for all Lance’s bluster, for all that he begs his mother to let him stay up late almost every night, he’s almost stumbling with exhaustion when he turns away…and he doesn’t know how far from home he is.

He rounds the cabin, leaning against the wall under the window with a candle lit behind, and…

A small hand grips his shoulder, blunt fingernails digging into his flesh through his coat, and Lance bolts upright.

When he opens his eyes, they meet a warm brown gaze that shines with stars and the faint light of dawn. His lips part in surprise, but his mouth is dry with sleep and all he can say is a groggy, “Who…”

“You have to go,” the figure - the girl from the garden - says. Her fingers slide down his arm to his elbow, and she tugs at him.

Lance, barely conscious enough to remember his own surname, climbs to his feet. A blanket slips from his back to the ground - when did he get that? - and he rubs his sticky eyes. “W-what’s going”—a yawn splits his jaws—”on?”

“Nothing,” the girl says quickly. She drags him to the fence and the garden gate before pulling it open and unceremoniously shoving him through. “Go!”

Lance stumbles forward, arms windmilling in an effort to regain his balance. His arm is still warm where she clutched it, and he turns in time to see the girl sliding a latch on the gate into place.

“But I—”

The scowl on her face softens. “Don’t come back,” she warns him.

Lance stares at her, incredulous. Is it not obvious he can climb over that low gate if he wants to? But when he reaches for it, something - an invisible wall - repels him.

And if the girl wants him gone…

His heart grows heavy with every step he walks away, but the sky lightens from dawn and red bleeds into black at sunrise. The trees that line his path aren’t so strange anymore, and he hastens towards where he now knows the village to lie, wondering what his mother will lay out for breakfast.

* * *

Lance grew up on stories of the witch that stalked the woods by night, forcing trespassing children to do her bidding by stealing and locking away their souls. But now at the ripe old age of twelve - thirteen come midsummer - he’s not so naive to think it true.

And the forest is brighter by day, greener by spring, and louder when Hunk explores with him.

Lance loves crisp spring mornings the best, loves how the fresh warmth chases away the lingering chill of winter. He loves the clean scent of growth, loves the chirping of birds returned from their winter haunts, the snow melting away and revealing buds of leaves and flowers and mushrooms only just poking out of the soil, loves the creek close to the village swelling to a stream deep enough to wade through with his twin sister and their small nephew.

He only half-listens to Hunk bemoaning the start of his new apprenticeship - Lance, for his part, doesn’t care to become a farmer like his brothers - when a sense of familiarity creeps over him.

He steps past a line of trees stained with moss and lichen and into a grassy clearing. A cloud passing over the sun throws it into shadow and—

Lance’s eyes widen, his heart skipping a beat. He’s been here before, lost just a few nights ago, but where a cabin stood and a garden spread around it there is now only grass.

He doesn’t realize Hunk seeks his attention until his hand claps onto his shoulder.

“Lance!”

He jerks his head around and meets Hunk’s worried gaze. “What?”

“You look like you saw the witch,” Hunk observes with a shudder. His head whips around, searching for the witch herself, and says, “Did you?”

The sun shines overhead, the cloud moving past and freeing its light, and Lance shakes his head to clear it. “The witch doesn’t exist, Hunk,” Lance says, rolling his eyes, “and the stories say she only comes out at night anyway. I just thought…maybe we’d been here before.”

Hunk frowns. “No…at least, I haven’t.”

“I guess so,” Lance says. He shoves his hands into his coat pockets, staring out at the clearing where a trellis with a vine climbing over it should rise from the soil. “Everything in the forest looks the same.”

But as they turn around to head back to the village, the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and Lance wonders if someone watches him through the trees.

* * *

Lance curses as he trips over another arching root, catching himself against the trunk and glad his mother isn’t there to scold him.

Although when - or _if_ \- he returns home, she’ll simply chide him for venturing into the forest after dark _again_ , never mind that this time he has a good reason:

Rolo _dared_ him.

Worse, he implied _Keith_ could do better…which is why Lance finds himself stumbling off the path through the trees on a balmy summer night with only a sliver of moon and the occasional hint of a star-studded sky visible through the dense leaves and branches overhead.

Every rustling fern, every cracked twig, every hooting owl fills his muscles with tension. Oh, how he boasted of spending a night beyond the village with no harm - except a good spanking from his mother - from a witch that doesn’t exist! And now he pays the price.

And for a flower that doesn’t grow in this part of the world.

Lance isn’t even sure how a jasmine _plant_ looks; is it a grass or a tree or a bush or a vine? What if they’re fruiting by this time of year? He doesn’t _know_ , has only ever seen the blooms pressed and dried to preserve their sweet fragrance.

“I’ll find some,” Lance swears as the trees grow more distant. “It can’t be that hard! It’s just a—”

A cabin sits in the middle of a meadow, a lamp hanging from the porch and illuminating a garden burgeoning with life.

This time no candle shines through a window, but Lance’s breath catches in his throat when a short and slight figure rises above the garden gate.

Her hair is longer than last time, tied high on her head and swinging when she whips around. And Lance knows he’s been spotted.

Well, if anyone knows where he can find jasmine growing in the forest, it will be this strange girl with the garden of strange plants.

He’s barely reached the gate when a trowel swings at his face.

Lance stumbles backwards, raising his hands and gasping, “H-hey!” His heart pounds as he meets the girl’s narrowed eyes and gazes at the trowel held before her like a sword. “I just had a question!”

“Well, make it quick!” she snaps. “I told you last time not to come back!”

“Not to—” A shiver travels up his spine, but he raises an eyebrow and wonders, “Why not?”

“Why…not?” The girl blinks, her arm lowering and lips parting in surprise. “Because you shouldn’t be here,” she says simply.

“I wasn’t planning on stealing from your garden,” Lance reassures her, putting on his most charming smile - the same one that convinces the elderly female merchants to spend more on his family’s wheat.

“That’s not why—never mind!” She crosses her arms, but her gaze never falters. “What do you want?”

Despite a prickle of irritation, her hostility doesn’t put him off. He steps back towards the gate and asks, “Do you know where jasmine grows? I…need to take a flower back home.”

The girl’s eyes widen. “That’s it? That’s the only reason you’re back?”

“Actually…” He rubs the back of his neck, his face warming in embarrassment, and admits, “I kind of got lost again.”

“Oh.” She bites her lip before offering, “I can tell you how to find your way.”

“You know where my village is?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head, “but you can use the stars to guide you back. Which direction did you travel from your village?”

“Right?” Lance tries, frowning in confusion.

The girl rolls her eyes in exasperation, but before he can so much as grumble, she crooks her finger and beckons him closer. He approaches until he’s beside the gate with her standing opposite him.

“Look up there,” she commands, her arm raised and finger pointing at the night sky.

Lance turns to face the same direction, following her finger with his eyes. “What am I looking at?” he wonders. “The stars?”

“Well…yes,” she agrees, “but see the Griffin?”

He shoots a glance at her from the corner of his eyes. “No.”

“Really?” the girl says, incredulous. “Do you really not know the Griffin? It’s the easiest constellation to spot!”

Lance scowls and grumbles, “We don’t all garden by night like you.”

“You only need to look at the sky _by night_ to see it!” The girl sighs, heavy with exasperation, but fixes her eyes overhead. “Do you see that red dot right over the tree line?”

Lance casts his gaze up to just over the highest branches of trees lining the edge of the meadow where, as the girl said, a bright red spot shines. “Is that the Griffin?”

“No, that’s Drule,” she explains, “one of the other planets in our solar system, but right now it’s the Griffin’s eye.”

Lance’s jaw drops, stunned. Planets? Solar system? Why does this random girl in the middle of the woods speak like a royal astronomer?

(Or, at least, how he _expects_ a royal astronomer to speak as he’s never actually met one.)

The girl raises an eyebrow. “Do you want me to show you how to find your way home or not?”

Lance nods. “Yes, please.”

He listens to the rest of her explanation while a creeping sense of awe overtakes him. She shows him the Griffin - a sprawling network of stars that supposedly look like a griffin (to Lance they’re only vaguely leonine) - and the fierce blue star at the end of its beak.

“That’s Marinis,” the girl says. “It’s the North Star, so if you follow it you’ll be heading due north. And if you know which direction your village is in…” She shoots him a pointed glance. “You _do_ know which direction, right?”

Lance shuffles his feet, face flushing again. “Yes,” he mumbles. “I left to the west and never turned, so I can use that much to find my way back.” If he walked west and the star is north…

The girl leans against the garden gate when he turns back to her, a bemused smile on her face that’s a nice change from her irritation. “Just keep the star in sight and you won’t get lost,” she tells him, “and maybe next time you leave your village at night I won’t have to see you.”

Lance’s heart sinks with an odd sense of disappointment. “So eager to get rid of me?”

“Yes,” she says simply, straightening. A dark cloud passes over her face, and any trace of openness she held while teaching him how to find his way home disappears. “You should go back; I have work to do.”

She reaches for the gate’s corroded latch, but before she can slide it into place, Lance grabs her wrist. “Wait, can I ask…two more favors?”

“ _Two_?” The girl’s eyes narrow at his fingers wrapped around her wrist. “I’ve already given you one.”

“They won’t cost you anything,” Lance reassures her. He lets go of her and steps back, just in case she refuses. “And I’ll give you something in return.”

“You don’t have anything that I want.”

Lance winces at the rejection though from her wide, surprised eyes he can tell she doesn’t mean to hurt him. And why should it hurt? They’re not friends, and he doesn’t even know her—

“What’s your name?”

“My…name?” The girl gapes, as if no one’s asked her _that_ before, and her eyes drift past him towards the trees. Her face twists, but before Lance can take the question back, she says, “You can call me Pidge.”

Lance’s eyebrow quirks. “What kind of name is—”

“It’s good enough for you,” she cuts him off with a scowl. “Now give me yours.”

He smiles his most charming smile, undeterred by her tone, and says, “I’m Lance, but you can call me—”

The girl - Pidge - flinches, a pained grimace crossing her face as she clutches at her head with both hands.

Lance forgets his introduction, concern pushing him forward. He rests a hand on her shoulder and wonders, “Pidge, are you all right?”

She shrugs his hand off and crouches behind the gate, low enough he only barely sees the top of her head, a low whistle escaping through her lips.

Lance doesn’t think twice about pulling open the gate and squatting beside her, heart pounding while he waits for some sign from her. “Pidge? Is there something inside I can bring you?”

She shakes her head, wincing. Her nails rake over her scalp as if in some frantic effort to relieve her of pain, and she buries her face in her knees.

But not before Lance glimpses the tears collecting at the corner of her eye.

Her shoulders tremble while he waits, useless and wondering if he _should_ break into the cabin and rummage through cabinets searching for a tonic to pilfer, until a soft voice grabs his attention.

“You wouldn’t be able to get in without me.”

“What? Get in where?”

Pidge lifts her head and meets his eyes. She wipes tears away from hers and says, “Into the cabin. There are…security measures in place.”

“A lock, you mean?” Lance raises an eyebrow in confusion, but relief washes over him as she unwinds and slumps against the gate.

“I guess so,” she says, sounding too weary to properly contradict him.

Lance lets it pass, despite his curiosity. “Are you all right though? That looked—”

“I get headaches sometimes,” Pidge confesses. “They’re bad but they pass quickly.”

“Oh, that’s—”

“What’re you still doing here?” she wonders, steady gaze snapping to him. “You know the way home and you have my name, so what’s left?”

“Uh…” Lance’s eyes rove around the garden, around the rows of vegetables and the small trees heavy with unripe fruit and the trellis covered in small white flowers. “Do you know where I can find jasmine?”

The girl stares at him incredulously. “The flowers?”

“Yes, the flowers!” Now that he knows Pidge is all right, the dare returns to the forefront of his mind. A hopeful grin pushes at his lips. “I know they don’t grow here, but—”

“I have a vine,” she says.

“What?” Lance’s eyes widen. He jumps to his feet. “You do?”

Pidge stands with him - too late he realizes he should’ve offered her a hand - and dusts off the back of her dress. “Yes, it grows on the trellis.” She points to the vine climbing the trellis, with its sweet, minuscule white blooms. “I can give you a few flowers if that’ll get you to leave before she comes back.”

“Before who—”

Pidge crosses the garden without sparing him an explanation, and before he can follow she retreats into the cabin, the door swinging shut behind her. She returns with a small burlap sack and picks a few small flowers to drop in it.

She hands it to Lance. “Jasmine,” she says. “It’s not indigenous to this area—”

“Then how did you get a whole _vine_?”

“—so you wouldn’t have found it growing wild.”

Lance peeks into the bag, smiling at the scent tickling his nose. “Good thing I got lost then. Maybe next time I’ll bring you something pretty to plant in your garden.”

“Next time?” Pidge crosses her arms, a slight smirk on her lips. “Do you want to get lost again?”

“I know the way back now!” Lance retorts, indignant. But a yawn splitting his face takes away from his offense, and his cheeks warm when she snickers.

She’s quick to sober, and almost as quick to say, “You really shouldn’t come back, Lance.”

“Why not?” he wonders, not a little stung by her words. “It’s not like the witch that everyone thinks lives in the woods is going to appear and eat me.”

Pidge wrings her skirt with both hands. “Eat you? No…”

“You get it!” Lance says cheerfully…only to yawn again. He rubs his tired eyes - the clock at home must read past midnight by now and his mother will definitely murder him if he doesn’t wake in time for breakfast - and reluctantly turns to the gate, disappointed. “But I know where I’m not welcome.”

Pidge doesn’t contradict him, so Lance doesn’t turn back.

* * *

But he doesn’t forget his promise. He spends the rest of the summer collecting - well, stealing - tulip bulbs from the village gardens into the same sack he returned with his triumphant burden of jasmine. The incredulous looks on Rolo’s and his friends faces were more than worth braving the forest - and getting lost - at night.

So he does it again, because despite Pidge’s warnings and her efforts to turn him away, he _owes_ her…and the instant he brandishes the sack and curiosity overtakes her face Lance knows he won.

Pidge rolls a bulb between two fingers. ”Why would you bring me a bag of onions?” she wonders.

“They’re tulip bulbs,” Lance tells her with a chuckle. “Plant them in autumn - the sooner the better - and they’ll bloom every spring and summer.”

Pidge leaves him standing in her garden surrounded by vines and trees heavy with fruits and vegetables ready for picking. When she reemerges from the cabin, a trowel - the same one she once nearly smacked him with - sits in her gloved hand.

And Pidge’s brown eyes growing wide and wondering and _gleeful_ as she plants the bulbs and asks him questions about their care would make braving even a man-eating witch worthwhile.

* * *

Twice more Lance ventures into the forest during the day with the objective to find the cabin, and twice more the sight that greets him disappoints.

Twice more Lance still holds onto the book of astronomy he came across in a book-selling merchant’s cart.

A thin layer of snow covers the meadow vacant of cabin and garden and girl; it crunches under Lance’s feet as he steps through the trees, the book wrapped in an oiled cloth and tucked under his coat to protect it from the elements.

And the lack of anything there - _again_ \- shoots discomfort into his very bones.

Could he have imagined the cabin _three times_?

Lance refuses to return home without giving Pidge the book, never mind that he told his mother he’ll be back by sunset, so he sits on a tree root and waits.

And waits.

And waits…

Shivers wrack his body as the sun sinks lower and the day cools. His teeth pinch his lip at an especially violent tremble, and the longer he sits there and the more _bored_ with the wait he gets, the harder it is to keep his eyes open.

He lets them slip shut…

Lance jolts awake as he tips backwards, arms flailing and heart jumping into his throat, but to no avail. He lands on his back, his breath escaping him in a foggy gasp and his legs propped on the tree’s root while the white and brown world dissolves into darkness.

He slowly sits up, groaning and rubbing his aching shoulder, but his eyes shoot wide open when he catches sight of the meadow.

And the cabin with its garden clear of snow.

Lance bolts to his feet, heart pounding, and marches forward, the smoke rising from the chimney tantalizing. A candle burns in a window, the garden deserted. He pulls open the gate and strides up the stone path, fist raised to knock, until—

The door swings open, and a short figure bundled in a bulky cloak and with face concealed by a hood steps out.

“ _Lance?_ ” Pidge hisses in shock.

“Pidge!” he greets her, a smile pushing at his lips. “I b-brought something—”

She closes the door and shoves him off the porch and around the back of the cabin to a pile of damp firewood. “What’re you doing here?” she demands. “I _told_ you—”

“Y-you d-didn’t mind me so m-much when I-I brought you the t-t-tulips,” Lance points out, crossing his arms against his violent shivers. “A-and I s-saw something that m-made me think of—”

“Wait here,” Pidge cuts him off with a sigh before he can tug out the book.

“I-I th-think my f-feet are f-frozen to the g-ground,” Lance complains.

Pidge disappears into the cabin, shutting the door softly behind her and leaving him trembling outside. Snowflakes drift to the ground, stark white against a dark sky, and stick to the bare soil and frosted branches of the vines and leafless trees.

Lance never really liked winter, doesn’t care for much in it besides playing in the snow the morning after a storm. It’s too silent, the nights too long, and the cold creeps into his bones and lives there till spring thaws it.

The crunching of footsteps on steadily accumulating snow jerks him from his musing. Pidge returns with a thick wool blanket tucked under her arm, a ceramic mug clutched in one hand, and a fist-sized rock with a core that glows orange sitting on her other gloved palm.

Warmth rushes over him as she steps closer, the snow collecting around his feet melting into slush that soaks his boots and turns the soil into mud. His shivering fades as the strange heat envelops him, eyes watering at the sudden relief, and he flexes his stiff fingers and toes to work feeling back into them.

“Better?” Pidge asks.

Lance nods, too busy staring between his hands and the frozen world that still surrounds them. “What is that?” he wonders, glancing at the glowing rock in her hand.

“It’s a hot stone,” Pidge says simply. She perches on a log and sets the rock beside her. “It’s not a perfect substitute for a fire, but it’ll do for a few hours.”

Lance sits on the other side of the “hot stone”, his exposed side growing just a little colder. When Pidge hands him the blanket, he wraps it around his shoulders and accepts the mug of steaming broth she offers him.

His mother would doubtless chide him for his poor manners, but he asks, “Why can’t you just invite me in?”

Pidge shifts in place, her grip on her cloak tightening. “The mistress of the house doesn’t appreciate guests,” she mutters.

“That’s kind of rude,” Lance grumbles. He hunches, trying to get closer to the source of heat between them, and adds, “I’m freezing my ass off out here!”

Pidge snorts, and when he catches a hint of a smile under her hood a warmth that has little to do with the hot stone ignites in his chest. But she sobers quickly and warns, “That’s better than what she’ll do to you if she catches you.”

A shiver travels down Lance’s spine, but he rolls his eyes and retorts, “What would she do? Drag me home by the ear? I’ll get worse from my mother!”

When Pidge doesn’t respond, Lance leans towards her, his eyes widening. “Pidge, what’s—”

“Why are you here?” she wonders, her eyes snapping to his. “If you wanted to see if I planted your tulips, you could’ve at least waited till spring.”

Lance doesn’t flinch, despite her sudden _chill_ that stings worse than a bracing winter wind. “Oh, well, I’ll come back then too,” he says, “but I wanted to give you something.” He reaches into his coat and tugs out the protected book.

“I don’t think that’s—” Pidge’s gaze falls to the book when he removes the oiled cloth, but rather than looking pleased like he expected and hoped, her lips twist into a frown. “W-why?”

But she takes it, scanning the title and opening the cover to skim the first pages, even stripping off a glove to run a fingertip over the letters that make up the author’s name and the dedication:

_Dedicated to my wife Colleen and our beloved son Matt._

“I saw it and it made me think of you?” Lance says, shrugging. “It cost all my birthday money, so—”

“You shouldn’t have,” Pidge says almost hollowly. She flips through the book, careful to keep it sheltered under her cloak, and with her lip between her teeth.

Lance’s heart sinks, disappointed with her reaction, and it only falls deeper when she shuts the book and hands it to him. “I-I already know everything in this,” she tells him. “It would suit you better.”

His eyes narrow - he’s _not_ offended by her insinuation - but he shrugs and admits, “I already tried to read it, but I didn’t understand much so…” He rubs the back of his neck, face warming and a sheepish smile pushing at his lips. “Maybe you can help me with that?”

Pidge stares at him for a long heartbeat before she wraps the book in the oiled cloth and tucks it under her cloak. “Thank you. I”—she sighs—”really like it.”

(Then why does she look so unhappy?)

Lance wonders if he made a mistake giving her the book. He _wants_ to ask her, but even his slight probing about what she’s been up to since he last saw her is met with short, clipped answers. And he doesn’t want to break this tentative bond they’ve established.

He has a feeling she doesn’t have many friends.

So he quizzes her about the stars, and when that brings a light back to her face, he grins, triumphant.

The longer they sit outside with snow falling around them, the more the glow in the hot stone fades. Cold creeps back into his body, and an hour shy of dawn the stone is cool to the touch. With Lance drowsy with little to keep him awake except for his shivering, Pidge huddles closer to him under the blanket for warmth.

She pokes his cheek to force him awake just after dawn, her foot tapping with impatience while he rubs his eyes and stretches his arms over his head. He relinquishes the blanket and lets her shove him towards the garden gate.

She doesn’t warn him against returning.

But rather than leaving in a hurry to slip into bed before his family wakes to find him missing, Lance thinks to duck behind a tree. His stomach turns at the _wrongness_ of it as the sun rises and the cabin, its well-loved garden, and the girl who tends both melt away into nothing.

* * *

It takes months for Lance to convince Hunk to visit Pidge with him, and after volunteering to be the taste tester to all future cooking exploits and after winter thaws into spring, he agrees to venture out by night.

“I’m just curious about if this weird gardening girl is real and worth sneaking out after dark for,” Hunk says as he follows Lance between dark trees towards the meadow. His jaws split into a massive yawn, and he adds, “And why we can’t do this during the day…”

Lance presses his lips together in an effort not to imitate him before squawking, “Of course she’s real! And she kind of…disappears during the day.” A shiver travels up his spine, but he pushes on along the moonlit path.

“How?” Hunk wonders. “Girls can’t just disappear after dark; that’s _magic_ , Lance, and all magic is—”

“—bad magic, I know.” Lance rolls his eyes and shoots over his shoulder, “But I’ve never seen _her_ do magic.”

“And you know what magic looks like?” Hunk retorts. He catches up to Lance as they reach the edge of the trees. “It’s not like it’s…”

But Lance barely hears him. His gaze catches on the familiar cabin standing in the meadow, the garden fence encircling it while smoke faintly illuminated by moonlight rises from the chimney. A smile pushes at his lips, and, eager to meet his new friend, he runs through the trees and towards the garden gate.

“Wait, Lance, slow down!” Hunk calls.

Lance ignores him. He pushes open the gate, taking in the soil dotted with green, the air rich with the scent of fresh growth. Between all the young vegetable plants, the telltale stalks of tulips emerge from the soil.

She _did_ plant them!

“P—”

“Lance!” a familiar voice hisses. Pidge sprints along the fence, hem of her skirt hiked up almost to her knees, a silver cuff winking around her ankle. “You can’t be here now.”

“But—”

“Oh, she’s real!” Hunk gasps as he catches up. He holds a hand out to Pidge and grins. “Lance told me so much about you but I didn’t realize he wasn’t making you up.”

“Hunk!” Lance screeches, whipping his head around to glare at him.

“That’s—what?” Pidge’s eyes widen before her lips twist into a grimace. “It doesn’t matter; you both _have_ to go.” She plants one hand on Lance’s chest and the other on Hunk, shoving them backwards.

They’re both bigger than her, so they stand their ground.

Lance stares at her hand, at her scowl and at the note of _fear_ behind it all. His heart skips a beat, and he wonders, “Pidge, what’s going—”

The hairs on the back of his neck rise on end before a bolt of lightning strikes the ground at their feet.

Thunder _booms_ a heartbeat before a blast blows him backwards. The scent of burning scalds his nose, and his heart jumps into his throat right as the ground strikes his back. His breath escapes him in a gasp, and the stars dotting the sky above him blur into streaks.

He groans and rolls onto his side, wincing as the ringing in his ears fades, but before he can find the strength to sit up and search for Hunk, a skeletal hand closes around his throat.

An emaciated face curtained by crackling white hair hovers over him, a wicked gash where a smile should be. Streaks of magenta slash through hollow cheeks, and pitiless eyes glow an evil yellow.

“W-w-w-witch…” Hunk whimpers from somewhere nearby.

Lance tries to say something to reassure him, something that belies the pounding of his heart and the churning of his gut, but his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, and all he ekes out is a frightened hum.

“Let them go!” Pidge shouts as if from a distance. “They didn’t do anything!”

“They trespassed on my property,” the witch rasps.

“No, they didn’t!” Pidge retorts, and Lance can only just see her, caught at the open garden gate with her hands clenching, from the corner of his eye. “Y-you said the garden was _mine_!”

The witch licks her thin, cracked lips, her eyes narrowing and doing little to dim the gleam of her eyes. “Is that so?” she mutters, low and dangerous. “Then I ask you, girl:  how shall I curse them?”

Lance can’t breathe for terror or for the cold fingers clutching his throat in a vice grip. He can’t even struggle against her, an invisible force pressing against him and keeping him from moving more than a twitch of his toes.

“Shall I charm them into snakes for thinking they can steal into _your_ garden? Or perhaps I take their tongues so they never speak of me again? I may even steal their eyes…” The witch’s lips twist into an ugly smirk, a finger not at his throat stroking his cheek and sending an unpleasant shiver down his spine. “This one has such pretty eyes; are you sure you would not like to string a necklace with them? Or even a bracelet to match the cuff marking you as _mine_?”

Whatever weight keeps him from moving lifts, his tongue free, and he wastes no time in croaking with what little air her grip on his neck allows, “You—you leave her and us alone!” He thrashes, kicking up at her until she finally lets him go and leaves him gasping for breath.

But she doesn’t allow him a moment to even _think_ of it as a triumph, not when her spindly fingers crackle with energy and her dark cloak flutters around her with an undetectable wind. “You are lucky not to suffer my wrath this time, _children_ ,” she spits as Lance grabs Hunk’s arm and helps him to his feet, “but next time I lay eyes on you, you will not be.”

Lance’s heart thumps painfully in his chest. His eyes slip past the witch, towards Pidge standing at the gate, her face pale and eyes wide. Her gaze snaps to his, but before he can say or do anything, Hunk stumbles to his feet and drags him away.

Fear catches up with Lance as they run, pumping him full of energy, and they don’t slow until it drains, leaving his muscles burning and his lungs aching for air.

Hunk leans against a tree trunk, doubling over and clutching at his stomach. “I hate running…and y-you never told me your nighttime friend lived with the _witch_!”

“I didn’t know!” Lance says. He holds his hands up, defensive. “I didn’t even think the witch was _real_ , Hunk!”

“Well, now you know how I feel! And I’ll be in trouble with my grandmother for nothing…”

“It was _not_ for nothing!” Lance retorts, irritated. “I don’t know what’s going on with Pidge, but she…she tried to warn us, didn’t she?” His eyes widen, a creeping sense of horror hitting him as he recalls the witch’s proposed _curses_. “What did she mean about Pidge being _hers_?” he wonders.

“I don’t know,” Hunk says. He straightens and turns in a direction that isn’t towards their village. “I guess Pidge did try to warn us, and if that wasn’t enough to keep me away, the damn _witch_ was!”

“Well, I’m going back,” Lance decides.

Hunk’s jaw drops. “That’s a _terrible_ idea!”

“What can a dumb witch do to me if she doesn’t see me?” Lance asks.

“She threatened to turn us into _snakes_!”

Lance shrugs, pretending that the idea - that the threat to string his eyes onto a necklace - doesn’t fill him with nausea. “I just think Pidge needs a friend more than I need to be afraid of a witch,” he explains simply.

“But…” Hunk sighs, shoulders slumping. “At least warn me whenever you go. I’ll give you a few pastries or snacks to take to her.”

* * *

Lance smears his face with mud wet from that morning’s storm and tugs the hood of his cloak over his head. He waited deliberately for a night with no moon, but tension fills his muscles as he skirts the edge of the familiar meadow.

He’s adjacent to the windowless rear of the cabin when he steps between the trees and falls to his hands and knees. He crawls, wincing at every tiny stone that digs into his flesh, but he plows ahead anyway as silently as he can, wary of the pack bouncing against his back with every push forward.

A smirk curls his lips when he reaches the fence unchallenged.

Lance stands and reaches for the top of the wooden fence.

He can’t touch it.

“What?” He tries again, but his hand stops a finger’s breadth from the fence no matter the direction.

He takes a few steps back before sprinting towards it, gathering his strength in his legs before launching himself into the air.

An invisible barrier rebuffs him, a wall of _solid_ air that sends him sprawling to the ground.

Lance rubs his aching, spinning head. When he probes under his hair for damage, his fingers brush a shallow, painful bump that forces a wince from him.

Well, no storied hero got anywhere without sustaining a few dozen injuries.

“Lance? What’re you doing here?”

He sits up slowly, groaning at a rush of dizziness, and blinks up at Pidge standing just beyond the fence. A strange plethora of expressions cross her face, from wide-eyed shock to a pleased but fleeting smile to a fearful frown.

Lance wants to bring the smile back, so he shoots her his most disarming grin and says, “Are you ever going to ask me something other than that?”

“No, because you really _shouldn_ _’t_ —”

“I’m here visiting you,” Lance tells her. He rolls his eyes and climbs to his feet, spinning his pack around to check if the fall inflicted any damage to its contents. “I’m sorry Hunk didn’t come - the witch scared him away - but he sent some—”

Pidge’s face shifts again, a scowl overtaking it. “She should’ve scared you away too!”

He doesn’t want to tell her how much the witch’s threat shakes him, not when his heart sinks in disappointment. “Do you _want_ me to leave?” he wonders despite dreading the answer.

Pidge’s lips part, but before she makes an angry retort she sighs and says, “No…but you should. If she catches you again—”

“I know, I know!” Lance raises his hands and quickly reassures her, “She won’t.”

Her eyes narrow. “Why risk it?”

“Because I don’t want to leave you alone with her.”

Pidge looks away from him, hands wringing the gardening apron she wears over her dress. “Oh…”

An idea strikes Lance, his heart skipping a beat in excitement, so he blurts, “What if you left with me? I can tell you don’t want to be here, so I can take you to my village and my family—”

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” Lance asks. He walks alongside the fence, Pidge keeping pace with him on the other side, until they stand by the garden gate. “Just walk through the gate and—”

“I’ve tried,” Pidge admits. “I’ve tried so many times but each time I get a worse headache.”

Lance frowns. “What?”

Pidge opens the gate and lifts the hem of her skirt. Starlight glints on silver, a cuff wound tight around her calf over a pair of short and sturdy boots.

“I don’t get it,” Lance says. “Can’t you just take it off? Hunk’s a blacksmith’s apprentice, so he can help if—”

“Lance,” she cuts him off, “it’s magic.” She drops her skirt, covering the metal encircling her leg, and sighs. “It _can_ _’t_ come off except through magic, and it keeps me here, bound to _her_.”

 _—the cuff marking you as_ mine _?_

His eyes widen in understanding as horror creeps over him. A thousand questions bombard him, all wanting to slip from his tongue, so he says, “Magic? Does that mean you bathe in it?”

He could smack himself for how _useless_ his words are; better he wonder _how_ she can get it off or why the witch forced it on her in the first place.

But Pidge laughs, the sound disarming in its warmth, and says, “It is a little itchy underneath.”

“So—”

“Do you want to see your tulips?” she wonders, brightening. “Haggar isn’t here tonight, so…” And before Lance can react, Pidge’s fingers close around his wrist, and she tugs him through the gate and into her garden.

The tulips he gave her bloom in red, orange, and yellow between the tomato, cucumber, and squash vines, the rows of rich green dotted with more vibrant colors. And while Pidge explains the contents and care of her garden, he gives her the pastries Hunk sent with him and a small jar of peanut butter he stole from the kitchen cupboard.

“No, wait, you eat that with—”

Pidge scoops a dollop of peanut butter from the jar and sticks her finger in her mouth. “This is delicious!” she mumbles around her finger, her eyes growing wide and delighted.

It’s a huge change from her anger earlier, from every time he either stumbled upon her or visited deliberately and she greeted him with a chilly or frenzied demeanor.

At dawn, when his yawns split his jaws and his legs shake, on the brink of an exhausted collapse, Pidge throws her arms around his neck that freezes him with shock. But he gladly returns her embrace while a smile pushes at her lips.

“You’re coming again, aren’t you?” Pidge wonders in a low voice.

“If you want me to…”

She pulls away, looking up at him until her eyes slip shut. “If you see smoke coming out of the chimney, Haggar is home.”

“And if Haggar is home, stay the hell away?”

Pidge’s lips curl in a worrisome smile. “Exactly.”

* * *

Without the witch home, Pidge lets Lance into the cabin, and it’s when they’re sitting bundled in blankets in front of a roaring fireplace clutching mugs of hot tea that fresh grief stabs him.

The fire blurs as he blinks tears from his eyes, his chest tightening and guilt - that he can’t do _more_ \- weighing down his heart.

“My nephew’s sick,” he confides in Pidge when she asks what’s wrong. “He’s sick and the village healer can’t do anything about it and since it’s winter he’s only getting _worse_.”

Pidge listens with wide eyes, her hand resting on his shoulder and her lip between her teeth. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I know what it’s like to feel helpless and like you can’t do anything to help someone you love.”

Lance’s eyes widen in surprise as her grip on him tightens. “Who—”

“I’d do anything for my family,” Pidge admits, “and I haven’t seen them in years.”

“Are they dead?” Lance dares to wonder in a low voice.

Pidge shakes her head, but before he can express any confusion, she says, “Come back tomorrow night.”

“A-all right…” Lance says. “I just hope Sylvio survives tonight…”

He does, but he barely wakes from a fitful slumber. Lance helps his brother’s wife care for him, watches the color fade from his face and his foggy eyes and his small chest wracked with coughing. His heart squeezes, but he tears himself away just before sunset to sneak out of the village and through the forest.

He barely notes the smoke rising from the chimney - pays no mind to what that _means_ \- before Pidge greets him at the gate and presses a slender glass vial into his gloved hand.

“Give your nephew this potion,” she says when Lance raises it to inspect the dark crystalline liquid within. “It can cure any human ailment no matter how dire.”

“So it won’t work on a cow?” Lance quips, raising an eyebrow.

“I actually don’t know,” Pidge admits. She hums thoughtfully, gaze faraway until he clears his throat. “It’ll work, Lance; I promise.”

“I believe you,” he says. He slips the strange potion into a pouch at his belt and, after an apology that he can’t stay longer, leaves.

He administers it to Sylvio in secret, stirring it into his porridge and offering to feed him. And with every difficult spoonful of spiked breakfast, a flush fills his cheeks and a luster returns to his eyes.

It’s clear by the end of the day that the sickness gripping Sylvio fades and that he’ll survive.

But when Lance questions Pidge about the mysterious potion, she doesn’t answer except to say she acquired it from a place far away where no mortal should walk…

* * *

Lance confides anything in Pidge. They exchange stories about their families, and when hers fall short - when her memories fail and fade - he entertains her with exaggerated tales of his own.

He even tells her things he won’t tell Hunk, about falling short of Keith in combat training, about his fears for his aging grandparents, and about the odd burgeoning feelings for some of the girls in his village.

He waxes poetic about Jenny’s smile and Jennie’s laughter and Ina’s eyes. He sings praises of their beauty and mourns his poor efforts to woo them.

And rather than teasing him like Hunk does, Pidge grows quiet, almost taciturn, her own responses almost clipped and something cold, even hurt, in her demeanor.

Lance isn’t so stupid he can’t see the subject upsets her, so he never speaks of the girls that occupy his thoughts or his would-be romantic exploits again.

(Eventually, he has none to share…and only one haunts his dreams.)

* * *

“If you could walk away right now, what would you do?”

Pidge’s hands still around the snowball she shaped to throw at him. Snowflakes melt in her hair, her cheeks red with cold over the dark green scarf he knitted her, and his breath catches, the moment between them as frozen as the winter air.

The ice cracks when Pidge says, “What?”

Lance’s face warms under her scrutiny. He bends down to scoop up a little more snow and shape a ball of his own, wondering if maybe he should take the question back. If she can’t leave, then why ask her about what she can’t do?

But he wonders, “Where’s the first place you’d go if you could leave?”

Pidge’s snowball strikes his ear, shattering into dust that falls under his coat collar and melts in cold tracks over his skin. He shivers, rubbing the sore spot and tugging up his own scarf to warm it.

“What was _that_ for?” Lance demands. “I thought we agreed no head shots!”

“That was before you asked a stupid question,” Pidge retorts with a twitch of her eyebrow.

Lance throws the misshapen ball in his hand. When it bursts against her chest, she barely flinches, but a grin pushes at his lips anyway. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it before.”

Pidge plays with the tassels at the end of her scarf, her eyes drifting to the snow-covered ground riddled with their footsteps. “Then I won’t.”

His smile falters under his scarf, his heart thumping painfully. “So…I’ve told you where I’d go.”

Somehow, some way, Pidge manages to look even more withdrawn. Her gloved fingers wrap around her elbow, shoulders hunching as she nods. “That’s where I’d go too,” she admits.

Lance’s eyes widen in surprise. He leans against the garden fence and tries to joke, “You’re set on the path of heroes too?”

Unlike his siblings, she hadn’t teased him when he told her of his aspirations, to travel to the capital when he comes of age and make a name for himself till minstrels write songs about him rescuing maidens and other heroic exploits, nor had she urged him to be more “realistic” before handing him a bucket to milk the cow like his mother did. No, Pidge listened almost patiently, rolling her eyes when he exaggerated his skills but oddly sincere when she told him he _could_ do it if he worked hard.

Her faith warmed him, made him want to show her right there what he could do…if only he knew how to swing a sword like the heroes in the stories do.

“Not really,” Pidge says, though he can tell she smiles slightly by the tilt to her eyes. “I want to study and pursue knowledge and…well, maybe I’ll be a scientific hero.”

Lance laughs, but when her forehead furrows in a scowl, he sobers, chagrined by her irritation, and asks, “How do you become a ‘scientific hero’? Do you rescue princesses too?”

Pidge snorts and leans against the fence beside him. “Perhaps, if the princess is ill and I discover the cure, but I’d have to be an herbalist or naturalist like my mother.”

Lance raises an eyebrow. “What about that potion you gave me for Sylvio?”

“I didn’t make that,” she tells him. She pulls her scarf up higher, covering her ears at a sudden cold gust, and adds, “A friend gave it to me.”

Lance frowns, something hot and irritated in his gut. “I thought I was your only friend.”

(It’s _good_ if she has other friends, he has to remind himself.)

Pidge shivers against the chill as she shakes her head. “I have one other, but I think I see you more often.” She slides further into his space until her shoulder presses against him.

Her shivering makes his arm tremble, so he wraps it around her, trying to share what of his heat he can. “You want to go inside and sit in front of the fire?”

Pidge shakes her head. “N-no, I wanted a glimpse of the stars tonight.” Her head tilts back, her shoulders not quite as hunched, as she takes in the night sky.

Lance follows her gaze. It’s the first clear night in almost a month, but the stars don’t shine as brightly as they should with the glare on the snow. But he can still spot every single star and constellation Pidge taught him, from the Griffin and Marinis to the Druid and the Paladin facing off, sword in the latter’s hand while he shields the Maiden.

How would it be to have your battle memorialized in the stars for another boy and girl to look upon?

“I feel a little closer to my family on nights like this,” Pidge says softly, finally breaking their fragile silence. “I’ve always wanted to study the stars and the planets.” She drops her head on Lance’s shoulder and sighs. “There’s so much up there we don’t know. Even the—the witch’s people don’t understand it all, and they have other means that _we_ don’t.”

Lance wants to ask her what she means by “the witch’s people”, but he holds his tongue, eyes wide in his eagerness to hear more.

“I guess I am a little like you,” she continues, “since I have this picture in my head of the king awarding me a medal of scholastic merit while I watch a press print copies of an encyclopedia _I_ wrote about moons or planets or anything celestial. Maybe it was ambitious _before_ I wound up here, but now it’s downright childish.”

Lance turns to her, his chest tight with sympathy at the despair in her voice. “It’s not childish,” he reassures her. “Isn’t it normal to want something more than what we have?” He frowns at her and adds, “And if _your_ dream is childish, then mine was imagined by a baby.”

Pidge, to his surprise, giggles. “You have a _little_ more freedom than I do, Lance.”

He runs his fingers through her soft hair, longer than he’s ever seen it and slightly damp and cold with melting snow, in an effort to comfort her. When she leans into his touch - after initially stiffening - he smiles ruefully and says, “If my family has their way, I’m doomed to be a farmer for the rest of my life.”

“I’m sure it’s not _that_ bad,” Pidge says. “If traveling to the capital and enlisting in the guard is what you want, why would they stop you?”

Lance’s mouth dries as he meets her curious eyes, his response - _“It’s not so easy as you think.”_ \- evaporating when he realizes that if ever leaves his village, he’ll have to leave Pidge too.

* * *

“You’re later than usual,” Pidge observes from the cabin doorway as Lance nearly slips on a frozen patch along the path leading to the porch. She crosses her arms and leans against the frame, a wry smile that makes something dance in his abdomen on her face. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

“And miss your company?” Lance says, offering a grin of his own that only widens when she rolls her eyes. When she shuts the door behind him and presses a mug of hot tea into his hands to help ward off the chill, he explains, “It was just my sister Veronica. She wanted to know where I’m always sneaking off to at night.”

“What did you tell her?” Pidge sets up the small trestle table and perches on a stool. When he sits opposite her, she shuffles the deck of playing cards he brought her last time he visited.

“I told her I’m working on improving my aim with a longbow,” Lance says.

Pidge raises an eyebrow. “In the dark?”

He slams his fist on the table as his cheeks warm. “That’s exactly what she said!”

Pidge laughs as she distributes the deck between them. “What did she think?”

“I don’t know,” Lance admits, squirming on his stool, “but she joked that I was courting the witch that lives in the woods.”

She snorts, burying her face in her stack of cards, before sobering. “I guess you’ve never told them about me?”

“I…no.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I thought you preferred it that way.”

“I—I do,” she says, clearing her throat. “It’s bad enough that you and Hunk know that Haggar is here; if anyone else - especially a village of people that know enough to _fear_ her - finds out it could be disastrous for all of you…”

“What about your family?” Lance wonders.

“What about them?” Pidge’s gaze on him grows wary, a card bending in her hand.

“What if they knew? What if I sent a message to them?”

“Don’t,” she says immediately.

“Why not? They can at least come looking for—”

“They won’t,” she says with so much certainty it gives Lance pause.

But he asks, “How do you know?” He props his elbow on the table, eyes narrowing. “You’ve said it yourself; if they’re anything like you, wouldn’t they do anything to get you back?”

Pidge sighs. “It’s not that simple, Lance.”

“Why not?”

“For one, Haggar is _dangerous_ ,” she says, “and for another…” She stands and retreats to the cot against the wall, Lance’s eyes tracking her movement and almost mesmerized by the way her skirts sway with every step. She pushes the cot aside and kneels, prying up a floorboard and pulling a book from a hidden hole in the cabin floor before returning to the table.

Lance recognizes the book as soon as she sets it in his hand. “The astronomy book I brought you?”

“Read the author’s name.”

“Sam Holt?” Lance frowns, confused as he meets Pidge’s eyes. “So—”

“He’s my father,” Pidge explains in a voice that’s too _steady_ , “and the dedication is to my mother and brother.”

Lance licks his lips, suddenly unsure as she takes the seat opposite again, and absently thumbs through the pages. “You said they’re not dead, so…what happened?” His heart hammers against his ribs, chest tightening, at Pidge’s sharp intake of breath and the _pain_ that crosses her face, but he still wonders, “How did you end up here with _her_?”

“A few years ago, my brother went missing with no sign of where he went or if anyone took him.”

Lance stiffens, shocked; she’s never spoken so plainly of anything unpleasant in her past before…

“The constables gave him up for dead or a runaway after a month,” Pidge explains, staring into her mug of cooling tea. A single tear slides down her cheek, belied by the scowl twisting her lips. “I couldn’t believe it; there was no _way_ he’d run off, and he couldn’t be dead if they found nothing of him.” She sniffs and rubs her eyes. “I just felt so helpless and didn’t know what to do.”

Lance releases a breath. “Did you…ever find him?”

“Yes.” Pidge sips her tea, holding the mug with trembling, uncoordinated hands, and wipes away a drop that dribbles down her chin.

His hands curl into fists on the table, eyelid twitching as he guesses, “The witch took him?”

Pidge nods and explains, “I still don’t know what she wanted with him…only that she would’ve made him her slave if I hadn’t offered to take his place instead.”

Horror creeps over Lance, his gut churning and eyes popping. “Y-you’re her—”

Under the table, Pidge’s foot rubs against where he knows the silver cuff chafes her skin. “She cursed me,” she says, worrying her lip between her teeth. “I can’t walk further than the fence, and my family forgot I ever existed.” She sneers, the contrast odd against the tears pooling at the corners of her eyes, and adds, “ _She_ claimed she did them a favor, that my enslavement wouldn’t cause them pain, but—” She breaks off with a sob.

Lance’s chest aches in sympathy. He rounds the table and wraps an arm around her shoulders, and when she turns to him she doesn’t hesitate to bury her face in his chest. Her body shakes with muted, silent sobs, tears - and probably snot - soaking into his shirt while he rubs her back.

“Is that why you disappear during the day?” Lance wonders.

Pidge shakes her head. “M-magic can’t exist in th-this realm during the day,” she stutters.

“ _This_ realm?”

She pulls away and meets his eyes, her own rimmed with red. “W-where else would we go during the day except another realm?”

Lance resists the urge to pull her flush against him again, instead raising an incredulous eyebrow. “The bottom of the sea, maybe?”

“Why would we go to the bottom of the sea?”

“I don’t know!” Lance gestures around the tiny cabin. “Why would you go to a _different realm_? How is there a whole other realm I’ve never heard about?”

Pidge presses her fingers into her eyes before a startling giggle escapes her. “When I met you, you couldn’t even point out the Griffin.”

“And now I can!” Lance retorts, crossing his arms and huffing indignantly. “What’s your point, Pidge?”

“Just that there’s a lot you don’t know,” she observes with a smile. “And a lot _I_ don’t know, so why shouldn’t there be another realm for magic?”

Lance’s jaws flap uselessly, stunned by her logic even while the shift in her demeanor fills him with a warmth more perfect than the heat from the fireplace. “Is that why you always kick me out at dawn?” he finally wonders.

Pidge’s smile fades as she says, “Yes, it’s…not a pleasant place for humans.”

“What about you, Pidge?” he asks, his brow furrowing

She laughs without humor. “My curse protects me; isn’t that ironic?”

“How do you break it?” Lance says. He pulls his stool towards him so he can sit beside her. “Curses can be broken, right? That’s not just a story, is it?”

Her eyes widen in surprise. “It’s…it’s not, but it’s not as easy as you make it sound.”

“Then how?” he insists. He leans towards her, undeterred when her face fills with color. “You want to leave, and I want to help.”

Pidge’s eyes drift past him, her lips parting as she seems to think over her answer before she murmurs, “Part of the curse is that I can’t raise a hand to harm Haggar, even in defense of myself.”

She looks lost in some memory - did she once try? And since she failed, did the witch still punish her? - so he prompts, “So…?”

“The only way the curse breaks is if she dies,” Pidge explains almost hollowly, “and she’s nearly immortal and nearly invincible so—”

“ _Nearly_ means she can still be killed,” he says, his jaw setting. Lance has never killed anyone, but he knows with a chilling certainty that he would in a heartbeat to free Pidge.

“Maybe,” she agrees, “but it would also be _nearly_ impossible.” She sighs and shakes her head.

“I can kill her,” Lance offers quickly, easily. “I’m a good shot with a longbow, so—”

“You think an _arrow_ is enough to slay her?” Pidge’s jaw drops before she retorts, “Lance, don’t you remember what she threatened to do to you if she just _saw_ you again? How do you think she’ll react if you _attack_ her too?”

“I don’t know”—he throws up his arms—”but it would be worth it!” He’s not sure what comes over him, nothing but his stomach flipping and the tension filling his muscles, when he takes Pidge’s hand and asks, “Don’t you want to be free of her, Pidge?”

 _Don_ _’t you want to leave with_ me _?_

“Of course I do!” Pidge says. Her fingers squeeze his, nails digging into his flesh. “But I don’t want you to _die_ for that!” Her gaze snaps to his, trapping him in place as she adds, “I’ve already lost my family; I don’t want to lose you too.”

His heart leaps at her words, but he can’t contemplate why with her looking at him like _that_ and with his hurt at her lack of confidence in him. “Don’t you think I could do it without you losing me?” Lance demands.

“No,” Pidge admits, “I don’t.” She wrenches her hand from his grasp and stands, that awful silver cuff around her ankle winking when her skirts rise with her turn. “You have to leave now,” she says, marching over to the door.

“What?” Dread ties his stomach into knots as Lance jumps to his feet. “Why?”

“Because I don’t trust you to stay here while you have that _stupid_ idea in your head.” Her hand rests on the doorknob, but she refuses to look at him. “Get out,” she says, her voice dangerously low, “and don’t come back until you forget it.”

Lance doubts he can ever do that, but he approaches her, his fingers curled into fists and his blood rushing with anger. He stands across from her just inside the closed door, his breath catching in his throat when she meets his eyes, fury fading as a wild hope takes its place.

“Wait.” She walks around him to rummage in a cupboard before handing him a jar of apple preserves. “In exchange for the peanut butter.”

Lance sighs. “You know it was a gift.”

“Then consider it a gift from me.” Her eyes drift to the floor, a deep furrow on her brow, but she pulls open the door.

A gust of wind chills Lance’s skin, a flurry of snowflakes blown in on it while a candle on the small trestle table flickers. He sags and says, “Pidge—”

“I just want you to understand, Lance,” she tells him. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

His spine stiffens as he rolls his eyes. “But—”

“She’ll be back by dawn,” Pidge says. “I won’t risk you being here at the same time as she is.” She points at the barren garden beyond the cabin, at a stone walkway scattered with snow.

Lance doesn’t move. “That’s even more of a reason for me to stay here!” he insists. “Dammit, Pidge, you can go home with me if—”

“You think something as simple as a kitchen knife can kill her?” Pidge demands. “You think she won’t know you’re here as soon as she steps foot inside?”

“I’ve been here at the same time without getting caught before,” Lance retorts, leaning towards her.

Pidge steps into his space, glaring up at him with enough ferocity he’d quail if he wasn’t just as frustrated as she is. “Inside the cabin? You’re lucky her wards are tied to her person rather than to her house.”

“Wards?”

“That’s how she knows if anyone bears her any ill will,” Pidge explains. “It’s how she knows to be on her guard.”

Lance snorts. “And what about you? Don’t you bear her _ill will_?”

“Yes,” Pidge says with a scowl, “but the curse protects her from me.”

“I still think—”

“Lance”—she inhales, her face carefully blank—”please leave.”

His heart sinks at the impasse, at the realization that neither of them will give ground.

As he walks down the path, the jar of apple preserves clutched in his freezing fingers, he casts a glance over his shoulder to see Pidge’s silhouette in the cabin’s doorway only for it to disappear when she shuts the door.

It never hurt so much to walk away.

* * *

Lance doesn’t care much for spring. Despite the thawing snow and the warmer weather and the fresh growth, he hates the shortening nights.

With the boys - now men - close to his age in the village settling into their futures, with some taking up a trade like Hunk while a few others leave to fall into the king’s army like Keith, Lance wonders how Pidge can fit into his likely fate as a farmer working his older brother’s land.

He wants her to…oh, how he misses her worse than a vital organ, her forced passive face haunting his thoughts and dreams an unwelcome distraction from the slow but steady passage of time.

“What happened to leaving and making a name for yourself?” Veronica teases him after Keith sets out with a caravan heading towards the capital. She thumbs through the few books they have on their shelf - books he took to Pidge before bringing back when she refused to accept them as gifts and therefore _deprive_ him of them - before picking one and flipping past pages. “You don’t want to rescue princesses or slay dragons anymore?”

Lance squirms where he sits next to the window mending a tear in his favorite trousers, a heaviness in his gut making it difficult to deflect her attention with a halfhearted laugh. “I guess Mami finally got to me,” he lies. “She doesn’t want anyone else to leave home.”

“No,” Veronica says, “that’s not it.” She shelves the book and leans against the wall beside him with her arms crossed. “Mami doesn’t mind us leaving so long as we come back, so…” She leans over him and feigns inspecting his handiwork. “Why should I believe that excuse?”

A prickle of shame stirs in his stomach, but Lance turns his head away and grumbles, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Is it a girl?” Veronica presses. “It would be just like you if it is, but you know, Lance”—she sighs, her tone growing serious—”you’re still young. Not every girl that catches your eye is meant to marry you.”

Lance’s eyes widen, heat crawling up his face while he resists the urge to bury it in his torn trousers. “It is _not_!” he retorts, wincing at the higher pitch of his voice.

Veronica raises an eyebrow, the slightest hint of a smirk on her lips. “Of course not,” she says. “It’s something else that’s turning you as red as a tomato.”

Lance rolls his eyes and turns on his stool so his back is to her. “She wouldn’t want to marry me anyway,” he mutters while something in his chest _twists_. “We’re…we fought badly last time we met.”

But he can’t help the direction his mind travels to next, not with Veronica planting the idea in his head. If Lance’s fate is in farming, Pidge - so bored with her confinement - would never be happy as a farmer’s wife, not when she’s so clever and comes from an educated family and wishes for an education and knowledge herself.

(And since when does he want her to be _his_ wife anyway?)

Veronica rests a hand on his shoulder, jerking him from thoughts that stir something in him even while a lump lodges in his throat. “I don’t know how you’ve kept this girl a mystery from us in a village this small, but I know that, whatever it is, you can fix it if you really care about each other.”

Lance rubs his burning eyes and mumbles, “I don’t know, Veronica. The fight was…a big deal.”

“Well, if she loves you as much as you love her,” Veronica says, her fingers squeezing his shoulder, “she’ll forgive you.”

Lance stares sharply up at her, his lips parting in surprise. “That’s not—I don’t—I _care_ about her, and there’s no way that _she_ —”

Veronica laughs. “I wish you could see the look on your face, Lance.” But her smile turns sympathetic as she hands him a handkerchief. “Go to her and see what happens,” she advises, and she leaves him there to think about it.

With the sun setting outside - with his heart skipping a beat at the reminder that he _should_ be leaving to meet Pidge - he gives up on his task.

It’s useless when he can’t see where he inserts the needle for the dark and his tears anyway.

* * *

If he hates spring nights, he _detests_ them in summer. Longer days bleed into shorter nights which give way to dawn…and Lance loses time with Pidge.

The daylight he spends daydreaming and dreading the night he’ll find smoke rising from the chimney again.

Even now that he hasn’t spent one with Pidge in months.

He wakes after sunrise in a warm and comfortable bed with an ache in his chest rather than his neck. The sun streaming in through the window shines on his face, no pale, slender hand shaking his shoulder, no regretful brown eyes hovering over him - nothing but the crowing of a rooster and his mother calling him for a speedy breakfast before sending him to check the hen house for eggs.

And despite his conviction not fading in the time they’ve been apart - he’ll kill that witch and free Pidge one day - his resolve crumbles that afternoon.

He’ll heed Veronica’s advice.

His next gift to Pidge will be an apology and a dusty bottle of wine stolen from the farmhouse cellar.

The distance between the village and the meadow feels longer than usual, and as his eyes catch on the cabin beyond the trees, he holds his breath.

No smoke curls out of the chimney, and Lance can’t tell if he’s relieved by that or not. Would he have paused if he _had_ seen smoke?

A part of him hopes he’ll never find out - but the greater part desperately _needs_ to.

He steels himself when he finally stands on the porch, unsure as Pidge doesn’t work in the garden as he usually finds her this time of year. He swallows and forces a hopeful smile onto his lips before knocking.

The door swings open, and Pidge greets him with wide eyes, a gasp escaping her while his heart leaps.

“Pidge.” Lance raises a hand, his smile widening and a lump lodging in his throat. “I’m—”

“I thought—but she doesn’t knock so it couldn’t have been—” She throws her arms around his neck with enough force that he stumbles back a step. “I-I’m sorry,” she nearly sobs, her breath warming his collar. “I shouldn’t have forced you away like that. You’re one of my only friends and I’m so afraid of losing you to _her_ that I almost lost you on my own.”

Lance wraps his arms around her, burying his nose in her hair as a welcome heat bursts in his chest and a less welcome one pricks at his eyes. “I wasn’t going to stay away,” he says, voice cracking. “I’m sorry I made you think I would, and I promise I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”

(But the promise tastes foul falling from his lips when he thinks of the witch.)

Lance wants to stay on the porch holding Pidge until he leaves at dawn, but she slips out of his arms, an almost _shy_ smile on her lips, and says, “You can come in.”

“You’re not working in the garden tonight?” Lance wonders as he follows her inside.

Pidge shakes her head and confesses, “I haven’t been devoting as much time to it this spring.”

“Why not?”

“I was…reading,” she replies a little too evasively. But before he can pry, her eyes narrow and she asks, “What’s in the bottle?”

Lance - he almost forgot he carried something - raises the wine bottle with a smirk. “A peace offering,” he says. “If you have cups, I’ll pop the cork.”

“Why?” Pidge snatches it from his hands and peers through the amber glass bottom. “What’s the occasion?”

“It’s”—he flinches when the cork pops out and strikes the wall behind him—”just a gift.”

“One we’ll share?” She turns to dig through a cupboard for two small cups. “I’ve never had spirits before.”

“It’s just wine,” Lance says, shrugging. “I don’t think you can get very drunk off it.”

Pidge raises an eyebrow before filling both cups with dark red liquid. “I’m certain you can if you drink enough,” she says. She hands a cup to him and takes the other, staring into it at the contents. “I’ve never had wine before either…”

“Well, first you toast,” Lance explains. He raises his cup, and when Pidge imitates him he hits it against hers. “To…to your garden!”

“To you finally learning astronomy!” Pidge tries as a smirk curls her lips.

“H-hey!” Lance retorts, indignant, but it’s hard to feel irritated with her laughter filling his ears.

But it fades quickly when she says, “To…seeing you in daylight.”

And despite the ache in his chest at her toast, Lance drinks to it.

They don’t bother to refill their cups after the first taste, instead sharing the wine directly from the bottle. A little thrill shoots through Lance when he realizes his lips touch what Pidge’s did only a moment before, and heat - from the drink as much as with the knowledge - rises to his face when she drinks after him without hesitation.

He sits sideways on her cot, leaning against the wall while she slumps into him, a giggle bubbling out of her when he tells her about Hunk’s last ill-fated attempt at a fruit tart. They play every card game they know - Pidge handily wins most of them - and Lance toys with her soft hair until she rolls her eyes and asks him to braid it.

“I remember your hair was so _short_ the first time I saw you,” he reminisces. He ties the end with a ribbon she hands him and rests his forehead against the back of her head. Her scent - of sweet wine, of earth and growth and flowers - fills his nostrils, and he can’t tell if it’s that or the wine that intoxicates him.

Pidge falls backwards, her head slipping under his chin until she lands against his chest. He rests his hands on her forearms while his heart races and smiles like a fool when her fingertip pokes his cheek. “Do you remember anything else?” she wonders.

Lance lets his heavy eyelids close. He slides until he lies on his side, propped up on an elbow, and pulls Pidge down with him, her warm body flush against his. “I remember it was a full moon…and you were gardening, like usual.” His lips curve into a smirk, and when he opens his eyes Pidge laughs.

Her brown eyes sparkle brighter than stars, a flush high in her cheeks as she stares up at him. “That’s all?”

“I think?” Lance raises an eyebrow and frowns, confused.

“Don’t you remember what you were doing when I found you?”

“I was…asleep?”

Pidge nods and reaches up to cup his cheek. “I suppose some things never change.”

Lance turns his face into her hand, letting his lips brush her palm. “Like what?”

“Like you falling asleep here,” she says. “I will bet you…another sack of new seeds or bulbs _and_ another jar of peanut butter that you’ll fall asleep within the hour.”

“I—I will not!” Lance squawks. “What do _I_ get if you lose that bet?”

Pidge hums thoughtfully. She turns onto her side and presses her forehead into his chest while loosely wrapping an arm around his waist. “Any”—she yawns, her grip on him tightening—”thing.”

Anything? Lance likes the sound of that…

But he’s much too comfortable, his head both heavy and light, lying like this with Pidge tucked against him and her steady breathing in his ear, and he doubts he lasts even a few moments before he falls asleep.

The sight that greets him when he wakes is familiar:  her brown eyes, her features illuminated by moonlight, a furrow in her brow - contrasting so sharply with how _happy_ they both were before slipping into sleep - he wants so desperately to wipe away.

A memory of her tipsy laughter fills his head, of the warmth that bloomed in his chest when she leaned against him, a fleeting thought of how beautiful she was despite her poorly patched dress and messily braided hair and the drop of wine sliding down her chin.

How it is when she’s the first face he sees upon waking…and how tainted that knowledge is with the reminder that it can’t be every morning, not when she’s quick to urge him up, to push an apple from her garden into his hands and guide him as far from the cabin - at the garden gate - as the cursed cuff on her ankle lets her walk.

How his chest tightens, how she teases him for the drool drying on his jaw despite his pain at parting reflected in her eyes, his head throbbing with the start of a hangover, his heart pounding when her hand brushes his and she thanks him for the wine and his time and—

Every dawn he leaves her kills him a little more than the last.

* * *

“How does someone know if they’re in love?”

Lance’s eyes widen at the unexpected question while Pidge’s fingers - wrapped tight around his hand while she suffered one of her headaches - loosen their grip on his. She peers up at him through her bangs, gaze openly assessing him.

Lance licks his lips, his mouth dry and heart beating an uneven rhythm, and says, “I’m…not sure. Why do you ask?”

Pidge sits on one end of her cot facing him and withdraws her hand from his, leaving his hand cold and wanting. “Well, the story books you’ve brought me can’t give me a satisfactory or detailed picture of it,” she explains, frowning thoughtfully, “and I can’t exactly ask Haggar.” Her lips twist into a sour expression before her gaze drifts down and she says in a lower, almost somber voice, “And you…you’ve been in love before, right?”

Lance snorts, a wry smile on his face, and says, “Not really, not like…” He shrugs and leans against the wall, grin rapidly fading.

The look on Pidge’s face fills his chest with a hollow ache; he wants her to smile, for the light to enter her brown eyes and her hands to gesture in wild excitement, and he’ll do anything to make it so.

His breath catches as he says, “You’d do anything to make them happy and keep them safe.”

To his surprise, Pidge scoffs, “I’d do that - I _have_ done that - for my family too, Lance, but that’s not the kind of love I mean.”

“Then what _do_ you mean?” Lance wonders, though he thinks he might know the answer.

Pidge’s eyes slip shut, her lips pressed together and hands clutched close to her heart. “I don’t…” She sighs, a frustrated grimace crossing her face, and says, “Seeing them is the best part of your day or night, you crave their touch, you miss them so much it _hurts_ when you’re apart and you wonder what they’re doing, you want to know what they think of every little thing that happens no matter how mundane, you want to make their life easier in whatever way you can, you want to know more about them, you”—her eyes shoot open, color rushing to her face as if she never meant to say so much—”hope that one day they’ll feel for you even a fraction of a fraction of what you feel for them.”

Lance’s heart skips a beat as he exhales in a huff, clarity washing over him. Pidge…she’s beautiful with a flush high in her face, when she speaks so much in a rush and yet in a way he can still keep up with her, with her eyes full of _something_ and—

He loves her, the truth of it ringing clearly in her own words, from the warmth in his chest when he looks at her to his longing to take her hand and interlace their fingers to his dread for the approaching dawn.

He opens his mouth to speak, to tell her - _does_ this mean she feels something for him? But the words refuse to escape his throat, not when he remembers the future that awaits him in the village or how _trapped_ Pidge herself is.

He _can_ _’t_ give her anything except occasional companionship…can he?

“Lance…” His name falling as a whisper into the tense air pulls him from his thoughts, and she meets his eyes when he looks up. “How can someone tell if another’s in love with _them_?”

Lance sighs, his chest tightening, and admits, “I don’t know. I’m still trying to find that out for myself.”

Pidge grits her teeth and nods.

She leans towards him, and he barely registers her warm breath brushing his cheek before her lips press against his.

She pulls away before he can react beyond the heat crawling up his neck and his eyes bulging in shock. His heart sinks in disappointment, at the sight of her fierce gaze on him before uncertainty touches it and she pinches her lip between her teeth.

“Does that—can you tell?” she wonders.

“Yes,” Lance breathes. He cups her face - how perfectly it fits between his hands - and kisses her.

This soft press of lips intoxicates him better than any stolen wine, the taste of her so much sweeter. His head and heart fill with a lightness when Pidge’s slim fingers thread through his hair, tugging him closer while their noses bump.

They part with shared breathless laughter before diving in again.

It would be too easy to lose track of time in his own willingness to drown - does he _really_ need to breathe? - and in telling Pidge he loves her and seeing how a radiant smile pushes at her face and in hearing that she loves _him_ and losing the ability to contain his own giddiness as he pulls her into his embrace.

(How perfect it feels just to hold her.)

But eventually dawn approaches - while he fights against succumbing to sleep - and Pidge sees him past budding tulips and sunflowers to the garden gate.

She tugs him down by the collar first and murmurs, “Don’t think this means I’ll stop asking for new seeds.”

Lance smirks, for once the parting not quite as painful, and retorts, “I wouldn’t dream of it, my—Pidge.”

She raises an eyebrow while he blushes at his near-slip - perhaps it’s too soon for _names_ \- but comments, “Don’t get lost on the way home.”

“How can I?” Lance wonders. “Your advice will guide me.”

Pidge rolls her eyes but kisses the corner of his mouth. “I love you.”

Will his heart ever stop skipping a beat when those words fall from her lips?

“I love you too,” he says. He wraps his arms around her, burying his face in her untidy yet sweet-smelling hair as her arms wind around his waist and her face presses into his chest, right over his beating heart.

He swallows a sudden lump in his throat and stutters, “I-I don’t want to leave you, Pidge.”

“I know,” she says, her voice muffled in his shirt.

His hold on her tightens and he promises, “One day you’ll leave with me, and I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Lance,” she says numbly.

“Pidge…look at me.” She pulls away just enough to tilt her head back, her eyelids fluttering when he rests his forehead against hers. “I swear on my life I’ll get that stupid cuff off you and you won’t have to see the witch again.”

He sees the conflict playing across her face, the desire to believe him - to believe in that fate - warring with what she considers _logic_. But she nods and says, “I only want that if you don’t have to die.”

“Fine,” Lance says, “I won’t die, so we can live happily ever after.”

And it doesn’t taste like a lie.

* * *

There’s a relief to loving and being loved in return, though little changes between them - little else but a frequent exchange of kisses and the sweet nothings that fall from Lance’s tongue without much thought.

They make Pidge blush and laugh, an insult sounding too fond spoken in retaliation, and that alone makes them worthwhile.

But he desperately wants them to be sweet _somethings_ , wants his promises to be more than words meant to comfort her - and placate himself - until he returns, repeat ad nauseum.

He wants to banish the heaviness in his heart and the sadness and regret obvious in her eyes, the reality of that cold, silver band on her ankle tainting what should be happy.

She fills his head and heart with love while they’re together, but at dawn when he leaves - at the reminder that their moments are numbered - longing takes over.

Maybe that’s why Lance takes up a sword - borrowed from Shiro, an old veteran who has no use for it and who only lightly questioned him when he caught him trying to pinch it from its spot hanging on the wall of his barn - that nevertheless feels clumsy in his hands.

He counts it a lucky evening when the full moon illuminates a thin trail of smoke rising from the cabin’s chimney.

His heart hammers against his ribs, blood rushing past his ears as he steps through the meadow of yellowing grass, conscious - but uncaring - of how exposed he is. But he’s _not_ a sheep racing to slaughter like Pidge feared; what sheep wields a sword?

No, he’s a lion racing for the kill, claws outstretched and teeth bared against a monster holding his mate hostage.

A barrier stands in his path.

Lance collides with the invisible shield enclosing the garden, his nose striking something solid and shooting pain through his face and up his arms where the heavy blade connects. He steps back, sword slipping from his grasp as he clutches at his nose and swears.

His breath leaves him in shallow pants, blood still thrumming with frustration as he reaches for the latch on the other side of the gate.

But of course, his hand can’t pass through that barrier.

Lance growls, a low sound in the back of his throat that would startle him if he’s not so intent on breaking through the gate. His fist connects with the barrier, sending a wave of shock up his arm and forcing a gasp from him, but he refuses to back away.

Until Pidge rounds the cabin and cuts through a garden rich with flourishing vines heavy with produce, her long hair whipping through the air in her haste to meet him at the gate.

“Lance—”

“Open the gate, Pidge,” he grits through bared teeth.

She shakes her head before glancing over her shoulder. “Lance, you have to leave.” She faces him, a regretful frown on her lips and her hands reaching towards him before she recoils with a wince.

“But she’s _here_ —”

“I locked the gate for a reason,” Pidge retorts, her eyes flashing angrily. “I-I don’t want you to get hurt because you tried something stupid like attacking her in her own home.”

Lance’s eyes widen in shock, his spine stiffening. “You _knew_ I’d—”

“I’m here because I wanted to protect my brother from the same fate,” Pidge reminds him. “You don’t think I understand how you feel?”

“I don’t want to take your place, Pidge,” Lance hisses. His fingers grasp air, useless at his sides when he can’t reach for her. “I want you out here with me.”

“I—” Pidge wipes her shining eyes, his frustration reflected in her scowl, and mutters, “I want that too, but not at the cost of your life.”

Her obvious concern warms him to his core, but it doesn’t quite wash away his irritation and fury. “It won’t come to that,” he swears, even as his heart skips a beat, because can he _really_ keep that promise?

(His and Hunk’s encounter with the witch still haunts his nightmares.)

“Lance—ah!” A grimace twists her face, her hand shooting to her forehead as she bends over.

“Pidge?” He tries to reach for her, only for his fingers to hit the barrier. “What’s wrong?”

The only reply she gives as she buckles is a pained groan.

“Pidge, open the gate!” Lance shouts as loud as he dares, a new frenzy overtaking him. If not for the magical barrier, he’d shake the gate, attempting to force it open, but all he can do now is tense his muscles and hope Pidge has the wherewithal - or desire - to let him in.

“N-no…bad idea—ow…” Pidge hisses.

It’s an eerie repeat of one of the first times they met, but _worse_ for how much more useless Lance feels watching her, unable to even rest a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Please,” he almost begs. He falls to his knees and resists the urge to try opening the gate again.

She’s silent for a heart-stopping moment - can headaches kill? - before the latch slides out of the lock.

Lance wastes no time shoving the gate open and crawling over the threshold of the garden to Pidge’s side. He wraps his arms around her, pulling her against his chest and grasping one of her hands in his.

While her tears soak his shirt, her cheek rests over his heart, and he hopes she finds some comfort in its beating.

Once he brought a bottle with an extract of willow bark for her, but she laughed without humor and told him that a “human” remedy did little for her headaches.

So all Lance can do is hold her hand while her fingernails dig into his skin, while he strokes her hair and whispers words of comfort and reassurance into her ear. She whimpers and hums in an effort to soothe herself, and his chest tightens at the thought of how _impotent_ he is.

He wonders if the witch is to blame for her pain.

The thought renews his fury, and his hold on Pidge tightens.

Her body relaxes against him, her grip on his hand loosening, and she says, “I’m all right.”

“Are you sure?” Lance asks, frowning. He taps her chin with a fingertip so that she looks up and meets his eyes.

He doesn’t miss her hesitation before she replies, “Yes.” But her fingers fist in his shirt and she burrows herself closer to him.

It’s easy to forget the witch and what just happened with her warmth seeping through his clothes and into his skin and her earthy, floral scent filling his nostrils. So they crouch in the dirt against the garden fence holding each other, heedless of the threat lurking within the cabin.

“Thank you, Lance,” Pidge says tremulously.

“For what?”

“For…being here.” She clears her throat and lifts her head, her hand cupping the back of his neck and tugging him down to rest his forehead against hers. “For being my friend and for…loving me.”

“I just want to do more, Pidge,” he tells her.

And despite what she says, and despite their uncertain future, Lance swears to himself he will.

(But he’ll always bring the sword along from now on, just in case.)

* * *

Lance flips through the book Pidge gave him, watching the pictures move and the unfamiliar script change color, the ink iridescent and reflecting the light from the candle. He doesn’t recognize the language the story’s written in, but the pictures are so vivid and detailed, both in color and in _motion_ , that he easily understands it:

It’s about a man who dreamed of touching the stars but found himself standing on the moon.

“This is really pretty,” he tells Pidge. He snaps the book shut and slides it across the table towards her, where her fingers clumsily clutch at the knitting needles he gifted to her, attempting to stitch a scarf from blue-dyed wool.

She ignores him, instead squinting at the clicking needles and muttering under her breath, “Knit one, purl two…

“Quiznak,” she curses, and he recognizes it as a swear she learned from where magic rules.

“What happened?” Lance wonders. He rests an elbow on the table and quirks an eyebrow.

Pidge grumbles, “A stitch slipped.”

Lance laughs and slides his stool closer to hers. He holds his hands out to her and says, “Let me fix it.”

She holds her barely begun scarf to her chest protectively. “I can do it myself,” she insists. “Just explain it to me.”

Lance tries as best as he can, and after a few more slips - and several kisses planted on her forehead when frustration nearly gets the best of her - she adds a whole row of stitches without his input.

“You’re used to being good at everything immediately, aren’t you?” Lance guesses.

Pidge glares at him over her knitting, but it softens when he flashes her a smile.

It’s almost cozy inside the cabin while they pursue mundane tasks. Last time he visited he helped her in the garden - all she really let him do was dig shallow holes for her to bury seeds or roots - but this time, after kissing him soundly in greeting, she tugged him inside and, while munching the biscuits Hunk sent along, asked him to “finally” teach her how to knit.

Then she showed him the book not of _his_ realm…

Lance flips through the book again and wonders, “What’s it like over _there_?”

The steady clicking of needles stops before Pidge replies, “It’s beautiful.”

He glances towards her, waiting for her to elaborate, but when she doesn’t he prompts, “So is _this_ realm.” He winks at her and, despite the heat rising to his cheeks, adds, “So are you.”

Pidge rolls her eyes, but her lip between her teeth indicates that she’s trying not to smile. “Not like here,” she says. “It’s nothing like here; it’s too colorful and vibrant and everything is full of energy, of _magic_.” She sighs almost wistfully. “I wish I could explore it.”

Lance’s chest tightens. “You’re as stuck there as you are here?”

She nods. “I have a friend there too,” she admits. “She brings me gifts - or bribes, really, since they’re in exchange for information on Haggar.” Her eyes drift down to her knitting. “I can only tell her so much…Haggar shares so little with me, and her journals are locked behind magical wards I haven’t a prayer of breaking.”

Fear grips his heart, his eyes widening, and he asks, “You’re spying on her?”

“If I am, I’m very bad at it,” Pidge complains. She sets her knitting aside and buries her face in her hands. “I hate being stuck here, useless, everything happening out of my control…”

Lance rests a hand on her shoulder. “Someday—”

“What happens next, Lance?” she interrupts in a soft voice that nevertheless stabs him through the chest. “What’s next for _us_?”

And though he knows the answer, he says, “What do you mean?”

Pidge rubs her eyes before meeting his. “How old are you?”

He blinks, startled by the question. “I’ll be twenty this summer,” he tells her.

Pidge nods, as if he confirmed some suspicion of hers, and says, “I’ll be eighteen in…about a month, I think, but…” A sigh escapes her. “You’re definitely a man by anyone’s - except maybe the Fair Folk’s - standards.”

Lance wants to ask who the _Fair Folk_ are but decides it doesn’t matter. “So what?” he says, shrugging and feigning nonchalance despite his pounding heart.

(Will she kick him out again but this time demand he never returns?)

“So…one day you’ll grow tired of me or want to leave your village to be a hero like you wanted or get married and raise a family and—”

Lance kisses her, closing the space between them and pouring all the feeling he can through his lips and into hers. She gasps in surprise, her hands clutching at his shoulders, before she pulls away and says, “Lance—”

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” he promises. He cups her face, making sure she looks at him, and says, “There’s nowhere I _want_ to go without you.”

“You shouldn’t let me interfere with your objectives,” Pidge says. “I can’t chase my own dreams, but you shouldn’t be bound here just because of me.”

Lance’s heart pounds as he reassures her, “It’s not a worthwhile dream if you’re not in it, Pidge.”

His fingers bury in her hair as he drags her closer to kiss her. If his words aren’t enough, he needs to convince her through action.

Her breath warms his lips when she drifts away just enough to murmur, “Call me Katie. Pidge is just a stupid nickname.”

“Katie,” he breathes before her mouth occupies his again.

Every touch of her lips, of her fingers, of her body leaning into him, sends a shiver up his spine and fills him with heat and a familiar _want_. But he tempers his enthusiasm, lets her lead the way.

Lets her tug his shirt over his head, lets her guide him to sit on her small cot while she straddles him, lets her coax his hands to her side to fumble at the buttons securing her dress, _happily_ lets her lips wander down to his neck while the only sound that fills the small cabin is their shallow breathing and his heart beating in anticipation and with the slightest fear that he’ll hurt her.

But he doesn’t let her blow out the candle.

* * *

He knows it’s a dream, the slow waking the morning of a festival day in a warm bed with a small, warm body in his arms. Excited shouts rise outside, of children on the streets throwing flowers - tulips, he thinks - onto doorsteps in an imitation of the afternoon parade.

She shifts against him, a sigh escaping her lips as she presses closer. His arms tighten around her, and when he opens his eyes the sight of the sunlight streaming in through the curtains illuminating individual strands of her hair like spun gold takes his breath away.

Any minute now the soft patter of small feet against wooden floors will approach their bedroom. The door will swing open with a creaking of rusty hinges, and while they feign sleep, a third will hop onto the bed to snuggle  between them and chatter in anticipation of the festival.

But for now he enjoys this rare peaceful morning, without him rushing to wash and dress ahead of his guard shift and without her burying her nose in a journal ahead of an exam at the college with only a kiss to spare for each other.

He shivers when warm lips brush against his collarbone, when fingers close around his arm and a voice whispers, “Lance? Are you awake?”

He smiles, but before he can answer - perhaps tease her about waking before him - the hand on his arm tightens almost painfully and she hisses insistently, “Lance, you _need_ to wake up now!”

When Lance blinks he lies in the dark, all traces of a warm, sunny morning gone and replaced with the gloomy interior of the witch’s cabin. Pidge’s candlelit face hovers over him, her eyes wide and frantic as they meet his. “Why?” he wonders. He smacks his lips together, grimacing at the sour taste of sleep. “It’s still dark outside…” He’s lost count of the number of times he fell asleep in or outside the cabin only for Pidge to wake him, but he dared to hope that, this time, he would wake with her in his arms.

(At least this time she slept with him while they huddled under a fleece blanket after making love.)

She’s even already fully dressed, though her hair still sticks up in odd directions, mussed from sleep and from his hands. The sight of her, the memory of his fingers combing through her soft hair, of inexperienced yet eager hands and shallow gasps, shoots heat to his face and through his stomach. And between that and his grogginess, it’s difficult to conjure much urgency.

Pidge steps away to pick something up, and when she straightens she throws his trousers at him. “Come _on_ , Lance!” she insists.

Lance groans and slowly sits up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and whining, “You want me to wear my trousers without any undershorts?”

He gets a face full of fabric for his trouble. He can’t help smiling, but his whole body tenses when Pidge whimpers.

He almost trips over his shorts, struggling to slip them on while he hurries to Pidge. “What happened?”

She clutches at her head, eyes squeezed shut, and grits out, “Lance, she’s on her way _right now_!”

Finally he understands, but it takes Pidge shoving him away and telling him to worry about himself to move. He puts on his trousers and shrugs on his shirt while his heart pounds, and he’s barely grasped the hilt of his borrowed sword before Pidge grabs his wrist and tugs him towards the door.

It flies open with a bang, a cold wind snuffing out the candle and plunging the cabin into darkness.

A shiver travels up Lance’s spine, the chill overtaking him and numbing his fingers around the sword’s hilt. His breath mists when he exhales, his whole body tense with anticipation.

The full moon outlines a silhouette in the doorway, familiar, hateful eyes gleaming yellow deep under a hood.

Anger fills Lance, warms him, chases every last lingering hint of sleep as he raises the sword and lunges, the heartbeat in his ears drowning out Pidge’s alarmed shout.

When the witch raises a careless arm, Lance flies backwards. His back collides with the wall, sending a shock through his body and knocking all the air from his lungs. He loses all control of his limbs, his fingers loosening and the sword falling from his grip while an unseen force presses him against the wall.

Lance’s heart races, with fury, with a creeping panic while he struggles against it, but a scowl twists his lips as the witch steps towards him.

He’s not a frightened child this time, and he _needs_ to protect Pidge.

The door slams shut behind the witch and a fire roars into life in the hearth. She sneers, a skeletal hand raised like that’s what holds him in place, and approaches, her pace slow and deliberate like a predator’s.

Pidge steps between her and Lance. “Not another step closer,” she says, her tone full of barely suppressed rage.

“Stand aside, girl,” the witch says, sounding almost exasperated. She points at Lance. “I know him, I recognize those blue eyes of his, and I have a promise to keep.”

“He’s harmless,” Pidge protests.

“He raised a sword against me!” she argues, yellow eyes narrowing. Her emaciated hand rests on Pidge’s shoulder - it’s only whatever spell holding him in place that keeps Lance from shouting and lunging at her - as she almost croons, “And who can even tell what damage he’s done to you?”

Sweat rolls down his face as he strains, tries to force a word past his lips or control into his own limbs while _loathing_ every useless instant.

“You think I haven’t noticed the strange plants in your garden or the books and jewelry he brings you?” The witch circles a trembling Pidge, unaffected by the glare she shoots her or the shine to her eyes. “And oh, have _you_ not noticed the way his scent lingers on your blankets and your clothes?”

Between his stuttering heart and the fear gripping him and the anger making his blood boil, Lance wonders if the witch eats wayward villagers after all.

“You thought you were so careful too,” the witch continues with a sharp laugh. “If he left by dawn, there was no danger of him crossing to the Other Realm.”

“You—you _can_ _’t_ have known,” Pidge denies, her head shaking. “If you knew, you would’ve taken him away like you took everything else!”

“Am I really so cruel as that, my sweet?” Her thin fingers grasp Pidge’s chin, forcing her head back to look her in the eye. “I allow you the garden; your mother keeps one so lovingly, but you never could help her with your spring sickness, which I cured just for you.”

Lance can only watch the tears - furious, frustrated, fearful - sliding down Pidge’s face, his chest aching and the witch’s spell refusing to falter. His anger only grows when she all but begs, “Then please let him go, even make him forget me like my family did. Just don’t—”

Lance’s eyes widen as he finally blurts, “No!” He doesn’t know if his tongue loosens due to his own willpower overcoming the spell or thanks to some twisted mercy of the witch’s, but he doesn’t care. “Pidge, don’t—”

But both ignore him, and the witch wonders, “And you have something to give in return for his freedom?”

“I—”

“No,” the witch cuts her off in a tone that makes Lance’s blood run cold, “I already have your freedom, and your life is useless to me.”

Pidge inhales sharply. “He’s useless to you too! Why do you need _two_ slaves?”

“I suppose I don’t,” she muses. She walks around Pidge and pauses before Lance, her eyes glinting unpleasantly and her lips twisting into an ugly gash of a smile. She grabs his chin and tilts his head to the side as if to examine every angle of his face.

Lance swallows - his ability to talk gone again - but manages a glare despite her rancid breath falling over his face. He longs for the sword, longs to take it and skewer her heart for all the misery she’s caused Pidge.

It’s only then that he notices the hint of sunshine streaming in through a window, dawn past and the morning creeping towards sunrise. Pidge must note it too, her shoulders stiffening as she says, “We’ll be in the Other Realm soon, so _please_ —”

“Will we?” The witch steps back from Lance abruptly. “Then perhaps I will let him return to his family and that pathetic little farming village, just for you, my loyal slave.”

The tension visibly trickles from Pidge. “Yes—”

“ _If_ he survives the day.”

Pidge’s eyes widen, her jaw dropping before she recovers and says, “But he’ll _die_ if he doesn’t leave now! You’ll have killed him!”

“Not I,” the witch says darkly. She spins, her cloak sweeping behind her, and stalks towards Pidge. “ _You_ and your choices will kill him because you heeded none of my warnings!”

Pidge’s face crumples at the witch’s words, all trace of defiance disappearing. Lance tries to protest, to tell her that it’s _not_ her fault when she tried so hard to push him away at first, but his voice still meets a wall. Frustration thrums under his skin, a scowl on his face and insults sitting on the tip of his tongue.

The spell holding Lance in place fades moments after the witch leaves. When he regains control of his limbs, he forgets his rage and finds Pidge instead, wrapping his arms around her. She trembles against his chest but returns his embrace with all her strength.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs, fresh tears soaking into his shirt. “I’m so—so sorry, Lance.”

He runs his fingers through her hair, trying to calm her even while his own breathing grows unsteady and his chest aches. “No, I’m sorry,” he says. “She was _right there_ , and I couldn’t kill her.”

“I _told_ you so,” Pidge says, sounding so much like her usual self that a smile pushes at Lance’s lips. But it proves fleeting when she pulls away and grabs his hand. “Come on. There might still be time to—”

But the sight that greets them when Pidge pulls open the cabin door is unfamiliar and foreign. Gone are the green tulip stalks poking their way through the soil and the jasmine climbing its trellis and the young tomato and squash vines crawling over the ground. Gone is the neatly cultivated and well-loved garden.

A wide, sprawling meadow of unrecognizable pink flowers spreads in all directions with no trees in sight. Snow-capped mountains that glitter in the sun rise on either side in the distance, and the bubbling of a nearby creek fills his ears. The air buzzes with an alien energy that makes all the hair on his body stand on end.

The shadows covering the valley shrink, dew drops burning away. Pidge’s fingers tighten around his, but Lance doesn’t need her to tell him that it’s already too late.

* * *

“I dreamed of you in daylight,” Lance confesses quietly. His fingers - clumsier than he likes - weave flower stems into a crown.

Pidge sits in the grass amid the flowers - juniberries, she called them - across from him, a book written in a script he doesn’t recognize - he doubts it’s a human alphabet, not when they’re in the _Other_ Realm - open in her lap. “Oh?” she says, raising an eyebrow.

It’s almost painfully normal now while Lance weakens - his joints ache like an old man’s and he can’t seem to catch his breath - and Pidge flips through book after book for _something_. But it’s the first time Lance has seen her in daylight, and if he’ll be dead by sunset, he wants to savor it.

“We were in bed asleep,” he tells her. “I’d just woken up and it was…nice.” A smile pushes at his lips, face warming under her intense scrutiny. “I think we lived in the city, and we had”—he swallows, his throat and mouth dry—”a child.”

He hears the instant Pidge’s breath hitches. “We did? Were they a…boy or a girl? Did they look more like your or like me?”

“I don’t know,” Lance admits. “I just knew we had one and not what they looked like.” But with the way Pidge’s hair shines in the sun, he pictures a child that resembles her…

Her eyes widen, staring unseeingly at the page in front of her. Worried, he touches her hand, and when she jumps in surprise her gaze snaps onto his and she says, “I want that dream to come true.”

The intensity of her gaze sends a shiver up his spine. “I want it too.” He hates the unsteadiness in his hands, but he cups her jaw and presses a soft kiss to the corner of her mouth. “And you’re even more beautiful in the sun than I imagined.”

Pidge smiles against his lips. “Stop distracting me with your flattery, Lance,” she says, but she leans into his touch with a sigh and promises, “We’ll have that one day.”

“But—”

“But _nothing_ ,” she insists. She takes the hand on her face and interlaces their fingers. “I _will_ find a way for you to survive the day here.”

Lance believes her, because he _has_ to. He grasps for her fierce hope, using it to strengthen his own, and smiles. “I know.”

At least the witch isn’t there to disturb their tentative peace; it’s a small mercy in the face of a mounting obstacle, and Lance fears it won’t last long.

He doesn’t finish weaving the flower crown, can’t with his head spinning even while he sits. And when Pidge, frustration written all over her face, stands to return to the cabin and exchange her book, he follows, longing for a nap.

His legs tremble upon standing, and all it takes is one step before they give out.

“Lance!” Pidge shouts in alarm. Her book slips her grasp as she races to his side.

It’s the last thing he sees and hears before darkness takes him.

* * *

Lance doesn’t know where he is. Every time he blinks something different meets his eyes:

His bedroom ceiling with colored paper streamers dangling from it when he let his nephew decorate before his father scolded them about the fire hazard.

The loft inside their barn, hay caught in his hair while Kallie lows, eager for her morning milking.

A roaring fire filling the witch’s cabin with an oppressive heat.

He tries to kick his blankets off, his skin crawling and damp with sweat, but a heartbeat later a shiver grips him and he takes them back. Something cool touches his forehead, a gentle hand brushing sweat-damp hair away from his face, and he thinks he hears Pidge murmur, “…need Allura. I hope she can help…”

Coughs shake his entire body, keeping him from drifting too deeply into sleep. Distantly he’s aware of Pidge helping him sit upright and putting a cup to his lips and telling him to drink, but he can never remember when he lies back down.

The fire escapes the hearth, igniting his blanket and licking at his skin. Smoke fills the cabin and sends him into a panic. His heart pounds as he tries to jump out of bed, frantically searching for Pidge while the acrid air burns his throat.

“P-Pidge!” he gasps between coughs. “F-fire! G-get out—get—”

He blinks and the wooden beams supporting the ceiling greet him again.

Lance always hated being ill as a child. His mother would force him to stay home when he’d rather run around the village with Hunk or through the fields with Rachel. Of course, that hatred never kept him from feigning a cough a few times to escape some activity he didn’t like - arithmetic lessons at the schoolhouse, for one - and he’s never felt anything like the weakness gripping him.

Never seen that bearded, bespectacled man in the doorway in his life…

Gray dots his brown hair and beard as he enters the unfamiliar room - a study with a desk at one end and with walls lined with busy bookshelves. “Lance?” he says, eyes widening behind his glasses. “What are you doing here, son?”

“I…” Lance fidgets, his smile frozen in place while anxiety churns in his gut. “I had a question to ask you—or, well, a question to ask Katie, but I wanted to ask you first.” He forces himself to meet the man’s eyes, trying to project confidence. “I know you just got her back, but I—”

The man rests a hand on his shoulder, interrupting Lance. “I know what you’re going to say, Lance.”

His heart skips a beat. “You do?”

“We have you to thank for bringing her back to us,” the man says with a twinkle in his eyes, “so if she’ll take you, of _course_ you can marry…”

“…words for the spell?”

Lance rubs his burning eyes, mind numb with confusion that he’s lying down again. He rolls onto his side, his breath hitching with the effort, and finds Pidge perched on a stool at his bedside.

A bowl of water sits in her hands, her gaze intent on the surface and a furrow in her brow. Lance’s chest aches at the sight, and he croaks, “P-Pidge?”

She turns to him, her eyes wide, and says, “Do you need something?”

“I-I wish,” he manages to force out through a sore throat and cracked lips, “I could make you…happy.”

“What?” Pidge sets the bowl on the floor and kneels beside the cot. “What are you talking about?” She touches his cheek, her thumb wiping away a tear he didn’t realize he shed, and reassures him, “You _do_ make me happy, Lance.” She sniffs but flashes him a tremulous smile. “You make me _so_ happy, but I wish—”

“N-not your fault,” Lance cuts her off, wincing at how weak he sounds. “Katie…”

Pidge’s lips brush his forehead. “I’m calling for help,” she tells him.

A light flashes close to the floor, diverting her attention back to the bowl with a startled yelp that rises in pitch to an anguished scream.

The ground trembles beneath his feet, a wide, arcing bolt of lightning raining from the sky and striking the village inn. The building ignites, patrons pushing their way out the doors screaming while smoke rises into the sky.

The fire spreads, and lightning strike after lightning strike fells every cottage while villagers scream. Shiro limps from the stables, his only arm hanging uselessly at his side and pain written all over his face while Keith raises a quarterstaff, uselessly wielding it against a figure shaped of flame. Marco and his wife escape the wreckage of their home, each one holding a crying child in their arms.

Lance watches it all unfold, his arms faltering while he struggles to heave a scorched beam pinning Hunk to the ground. “I-I’ve almost got it,” he lies. He bends over, trying to catch his breath, before attempting it again.

He calls for help from everyone that runs past, but with the man-shaped flames giving chase, it’s useless.

It’s all Lance can do to keep Hunk calm, to reassure him he’ll get him out from under the beam.

“I _told_ you not to go back to the witch’s cabin,” Hunk chides him despite an agonized groan, “but you had to, because a girl was _lonely_.”

“How was I supposed to know this would happen?” Lance demands. But guilt ties his stomach into knots while tears stream down his cheeks. “I’m sorry…” He chokes on a sob but pushes aside his grief; he won’t give up while he can still help someone.

Until the witch herself steps into view.

Her wispy white hair is an electrified cloud around her head, her eyes crazed and flashing as bright as the lightning, but that’s not what makes Lance’s blood run cold.

The witch holds a knife to Pidge’s throat.

“Come on out, boy!” she croaks. “You know what you did!”

Lance stiffens, his heart squeezing while he scowls. “Pidge—”

“Lance,” Hunk mumbles, “don’t listen to her.”

But he barely hears him, not when the witch calls, “You stole something that belongs to me, and if you don’t come out and face my wrath, your whole village will pay!”

Even to Lance’s fury-fogged brain, he knows the witch offers a good deal; his village - his _family_ \- spared more destruction and Pidge spared her life? He can’t pass that up.

So Lance ignores Hunk’s protests that it’s a _trick_ , reminding him that a witch would never be so plainspoken, and emerges from their hiding place with his hands raised. “Let her go, witch,” he says. “Let them _all_ go!”

The witch’s lips twist into a smirk, and Lance’s breath catches in alarm. “I never said I’d let her go, but for you…”

The blade slides across Pidge’s throat.

“I release her from bondage,” the witch pronounces. “She’s all yours!”

Lance sprints forward too slowly, his heart pounding and arms outstretched to catch Pidge as she crumples. She lands in his arms, and the witch cackles over him, but he pays her no mind.

“Pidge,” he says, hurriedly working to stem the flow of red from her torn throat with his sleeve. “H-hold on, I’ll get you—”

“Y-your fault…” Pidge murmurs as a drop of blood trails from the corner of her mouth down her chin. She cups his jaw, a feeble smile on her face until her eyes flutter shut. “Should’ve…should’ve listened to me when I told you to stay away…”

Lance’s chest tightens as he blinks tears from his eyes. “No, Pidge,” he says, shaking his head. “Katie, _no_ , you’ll be—”

“… _shocked_ he’s survived this long.” A cool hand too large to be Pidge’s touches his forehead. “Really, I’d expect him to be dead within the hour.”

“But _can_ you help him?”

Lance’s heart skips a beat at the sound of Pidge’s voice. He forces his sticky eyelids open, blinking a few times until the face hovering over him comes into focus.

An ethereally beautiful woman with dark skin and pointed ears poking out of her almost luminous white hair peers down at him, wearing a deep frown. “I can,” she says carefully, “but there may be…consequences. My magic doesn’t suit humans, Pidge.”

“What kind of consequences?” Pidge wonders. Distantly he hears her shoving a window open, a chilly breeze giving his overheated skin some relief a heartbeat later.

When she steps into view, it’s obvious how short she is beside the strange woman.

“I don’t know,” the woman admits. “I’ve never used magic on humans…”

“But if you don’t this time, he’ll _die_ ,” she insists. When the woman still hesitates, Pidge’s eyes flash with anger as she snaps, “What’re you waiting for, Allura?”

The woman pinches her eyes shut, nostrils flaring in obvious irritation. “Would _you_ perform an experiment of which you cannot even _begin_ to guess at the results?”

“If it means keeping Lance alive?” Pidge hisses. “In a heartbeat, especially if it’s…my fault he’s dying.”

Lance longs to reassure her, but it’s all he can do to simply keep his eyes open.

“Will it…will it hurt _you_?” Pidge then wonders with a slight, chagrined frown.

“I don’t believe so,” Allura admits. She sighs and adds, “I’m worried about him, Pidge.”

“I know, but—”

“I’ll do it,” she decides. “It won’t take long, but it’ll only be a temporary remedy.”

“He just needs to survive here till sunset,” Pidge says. “Thank you, Allura.”

“Don’t thank me until I succeed,” Allura says. The cot sinks when she sits on the edge.

Lance doesn’t - or can’t - struggle when she takes his face in her hands. Her eyes, a vivid blue with bizarre pink circles within her pupils, slip shut as she exhales from her mouth.

Warmth, far more soothing and comfortable than the heat of his fever, floods into him, a river bursting through a dam built of straw. The ache in his lungs abates, his chest no longer wracked with coughs, and strength trickles back into his muscles.

He needs to stretch them, to jump out of bed and sweep Pidge into his arms, but Allura holds him in place. Her eyes open and widen, her thumbs pressing into his cheeks.

“That is…strange,” she observes.

Pidge hovers over her shoulder, an eyebrow raised. “Did you mean to do that?”

“D-do what?” Lance wonders, his voice cracking. He pushes himself upright when Allura finally lets him go and leans back against a pillow.

“Lance!” Pidge flings her arms around his neck, her heart pounding so strongly he can feel it where she’s pressed against him.

He wraps his arms around her, burying his face in her hair and sighing. “I’m cured?”

Pidge’s grip on him loosens - but she doesn’t let go - as she half-turns towards Allura. “Is he?”

Allura smiles. “Yes, although I’m not sure if those”—she points to the pink markings on her cheeks—”will last or not.”

Lance blinks in confusion, and it only grows worse when Pidge’s thumb skirts over his cheek. “Is there something on my face?”

“Besides your eyes, nose, lips, and eyebrows?” Her nose wrinkles slightly - Lance wants to kiss it but holds back for the moment - and she says, “I’m not sure if you’ll like them.”

“Like…what?”

Allura stands and retrieves a bowl of water from the bedside table. “Look.”

Lance takes the bowl, raising his eyebrow as he stares down at his reflection and finds…two gleaming blue markings standing out against his skin. “What the quiznak…”

When Pidge giggles, he shoots a sharp glance at her only for her to smile and kiss his cheek. “I guess I swear too much around you,” she says.

“Or perhaps I swear too much around you,” Allura retorts with a roll of her eyes.

A relief so strong he collapses back against his pillow washes over him. “I wonder what my family will think of these,” he says, pointing to his cheeks.

 _His family!_ His gaze snaps to Allura. “Pidge’s friend,” he realizes. “You…gave her the potion that saved my nephew’s life.”

Allura’s eyes widen in surprise before she smiles. “Oh, yes, I suppose that was me.”

Lance grins, gratitude filling him. “Thank you, Allura,” he says. “If not for you, he’d be deader than I almost was. Right, Pidge?” He glances in Pidge’s direction, expecting her to agree or even to tease, but she doesn’t quite meet his eyes when she takes the bowl of water.

The suddenly somber atmosphere forces him back upright, because—

Of course they’re not in the clear yet, not with the witch’s threat against him hanging over his head.

(Will he see Sylvio - the rest of his family - again?)

A shiver travels up his spine at the reminder, and he takes Pidge’s hand. “We _have_ to do something about the witch, Pidge.”

She bites her lip before she sighs and agrees, “I know.”

Lance blinks, startled that it took so little convincing after every other time she resisted his ideas and attempts and _plans_ to end her, but he can’t feel victorious. “Are you—are you sure?” he asks her.

Pidge squeezes his hand, her gaze hardening, and nods. She then turns to Allura - Lance almost forgot she hadn’t left yet - and asks, “Can you kill Haggar?”

Allura’s eyes pop almost comically. “You do realize that as soon as Haggar dies, the curse tethering you to her will break?”

“I’m counting on that,” Pidge says. “If she dies, she can’t hurt Lance, I get my freedom back, and…every spell she’s cast breaks.” Her eyes drift down, and Lance, guessing she’s thinking of her family and the gaps in their memories, wraps an arm around her.

“You’ll be vulnerable to the effects of magic on your human body,” Allura points out.

“Can’t you cure me like you did with Lance?”

Allura frowns, a hint of uncertainty in it as she admits, “I do not know if I can replicate those results, Pidge, and the breaking of the curse in this Realm - of every spell she wrought, including those on this cabin - may _strand_ you here. And what if I fail to kill her? She may seek retribution against both of you.”

Pidge’s fingernails dig into Lance’s skin so hard he has to fight a wince. But she shoots to her feet, her eyes flashing, and demands, “Are you worried about losing your spy?”

“Of _course_ not,” Allura says, her eyes wide and alarmed, “but it’s not so simple as the two of you seem to think.”

“I know that better than most,” Pidge retorts. She crosses her arms and sits on the edge of the cot, a sigh bursting from her and her shoulders slumping in defeat.

Lance hates it on her, especially now that hope dangles a boon in their faces. He rests his hand on her shoulder until she half-leans into him, and he props his chin on the top of her head. “I can help,” he says. “I might’ve just been sick”—and his muscles still ache with weakness—”but I brought my sword.”

(Never mind that he doesn’t know how to use it.)

Allura paces in the cabin’s tiny interior. “I’m sure Pidge has already told you why that’s not a good idea.”

When Pidge glares up at him, Lance sheepishly mumbles, “She has.”

“ And Haggar is…Banished,” Allura continues as if she hadn’t heard him. “I do not think we can stand in the same space.”

“What do you mean?” Lance wonders.

“My father Banished Haggar when he learned of her treachery in conspiring with Zarkon,” Allura explains. She perches on the stool vacated by Pidge and clasps her hands in her lap. “As a result, she cannot step foot in this Realm except in the dobosh before sunset and the dobosh after sunrise.”

Lance muttered into Pidge’s ear, “Who’s Zarkon and what’s a _dobosh_?”

“Zarkon is the king of Galra,” Allura replies first.

“A dobosh is about a minute,” Pidge informs him. “Time is a little…different here.”

Lance, no less confused than he was moments earlier, raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know what _Galra_ is either.”

“They’re a race of Fair Folk and my kingdom’s sworn enemies,” Allura says.

Pidge half-turns to him and mumbles, “They’re more like the _Un_ fair Folk.” Her lips quirk into a grin.

Lance smiles, amused more by the fact that she enjoyed her own joke than by the joke itself. But when Allura shoots them a pointed frown, he sobers and says, “It sounds like we have a very narrow window then.”

Pidge’s sharp eyes meet his. “What are you thinking, Lance?”

“Allura,” Lance says, turning to her, “can you go to our realm?”

Allura’s eyes slip shut as she shakes her head. “Only a Banishment can force me there,” she confesses. “Lance is right; if I act against Haggar it must be here.”

Lance grins and jokes, “I’m not used to being right so much in one day.”

Pidge rolls her eyes. “We still need a plan, especially if we only have one dobosh to get this right, and…” She stares at her hands, a scowl twisting her face. “I’m useless.”

Lance takes both of her hands, holding them between his, and when she meets his gaze he reassures her, “You’re not, Pidge. You’re the reason we’re doing this.”

Pidge shakes her head slightly. “If it was just me, I wouldn’t let you,” she protests, “but I can’t let her have you too.” She tugs her hand from his grasp and cups his cheek.

Lance leans into her gentle touch, his eyes closing and a sigh escaping him. “She won’t,” he promises. “By sunset she won’t have either of us.”

* * *

Even the best laid plans go wrong.

The witch materializes in the cabin’s doorway a minute - a dobosh - shy of sunset, bringing with her the acrid scent of smoke and lightning-scorched air. Her eyes cast a yellow glow that brightens to white in the instant before Allura strikes.

She catches the brilliant, enchanted pink whip, the cord wrapping around her arm and emitting a trail of steam. “Princess Allura,” the witch snarls, “you overestimate your own strength.”

Lance tenses under the bedsheets, his heart hammering in his ears as he fights the urge to fly out and _attack_. His grip tightens on the sword hidden with him, but for now, while Allura springs her attack in what time she has, he feigns ill, her intent masking his while he lies in wait.

“I overestimate nothing,” Allura hisses. A second whip springs from her other hand to wind around the witch’s other arm. “Your corrupted magic can’t stand against mine.”

The seconds tick by as the first hint of alarm finds its way into the witch’s demeanor. She struggles against Allura’s bonds as the whip, sinuous and steaming, binds her arms against her sides.

“Where’s my—what have you done to my slave?” the witch demands.

“I’m here,” Pidge announces, emerging from her own hiding spot in the single small other room.

“I should’ve known the princess would befriend you,” the witch sneers, “but no _good_ Altean would raise a hand against your race, so what did she offer you in return?”

Pidge bites her lip, her hands trembling. “It doesn’t matter.”

Lance scowls, careful to turn his face away so the witch can’t see. Fury fills him, already anticipating the mockery in store for Pidge at her tormentor’s hands, but he _must_ wait for the seconds before sunset or risk stranding them in this Realm if the witch dies too soon.

“Doesn’t it?” the witch wonders. “Surely if she’s given you nothing, you would turn against her out of loyalty to me?”

“I have no loyalty to you!” Pidge retorts. “What have _you_ given me but a garden to keep me amused? You took my family and my freedom, so what makes you think I’ll let you take anything else?”

“Brave words for one so weak and at my mercy,” the witch says.

Heat floods the cabin before Allura and Pidge gasp, and Lance rolls over to find the witch engulfed in flames.

“Pidge!” Allura calls, yanking Pidge behind her. But her bindings on the witch fade in favor of shielding them from the flying sparks.

The fire disappears as if little more than a candle flame blown out by a powerful wind, but by then the damage is done.

“No!” Allura gasps, staring at her translucent hands.

Pidge grabs for one, but her hand passes through uselessly as Allura vanishes.

Lance is done hiding. He throws the threadbare blankets aside and swings himself off the cot, sword held in both hands and heart pumping a furious energy through his body as he—

The witch holds a knife to Pidge’s throat, her other hand gripping her arm and her gleaming yellow eyes pinning Lance. “If my magic and threats to you are no deterrent to you, boy,” she sneers, “perhaps her life is.”

He barely hears her for the blood rushing past his ears, but he hears enough to level her with a glare. His grip on the sword doesn’t falter, but the shining blade against Pidge’s neck fills him with fear.

Lance has no doubt the witch will kill her; what use is Pidge to her anyway?

And what use is _he_?

“Now put down that sword,” the witch croaks. “I suspect you scarcely know how to use it, but you’ve become a thorn in my side, filling my slave’s head with your pretty lies.”

Lies? His heart sinks, heavy with dread. “Pidge—”

“ _Y-you_ _’ve_ been in my head!” Pidge accuses the witch despite the blade against her skin. “That’s how you knew he was with me!”

“You are a clever one,” the witch practically simpers. “Your potential is wasted as a slave—”

“Then free her!” Lance almost begs. “Please”—the sword slips from his grasp as he falls to his knees—”let her go, and take me instead.”

His heart skips a beat at the offer, loathing for the hag before him holding Pidge hostage filling him. And what would his family think, giving himself for a woman they’ve never even met?

Perhaps if he can send a note with Pidge to them, explain to them how he loves them and her—

“No! Lance, don’t be an imbecile!” Pidge struggles against the witch’s grip on her, hissing when the blade pierces her skin and a drop of blood wells out.

Lance’s own blood boils at the sight, his muscles tensing, but he holds himself back and makes sure to hold the witch’s gaze. “Curse me instead.”

Her eyes drifts down, widening slightly. “The princess left her mark on you,” she observes, “and you’ve survived the Other Realm far longer than I dared expect. You may be a worthwhile slave…”

“Only if you let Pidge go,” Lance insists even as his heart rebels against the idea of bondage, hammering against his ribcage; he wonders if it’ll launch out of his chest and strike the witch in the nose.

“You would be prepared for her to forget you?” the witch wonders.

He dares not glance at Pidge, not even at her sharp intake of breath, lest his resolve falter. He can’t breathe for a long moment and has to force himself to nod.

The witch cackles, the sound making his skin crawl, and cups Pidge’s jaw almost tenderly. She tries to twist away from her, but her grip holds secure. “No, I do not wish such misery for either of you when I see a more expedient solution to our dilemma.”

His hands curl into fists - how he itches to take the sword up again - as his eyes widen. “What…?”

“I shall keep you both,” the witch decides.

Lance stares at her, slow to comprehend, but his fog lifts when Pidge yells, “No! Let him _go_!” She thrashes weakly against the witch’s grip as she hauls her towards the door.

Lance tries to stand, but a force pressing him down and digging his knees into the wooden floor stops him. He can’t content himself with a snarl and shouts, “Don’t touch her!”

But of course it’s too late; he’s already failed.

The witch ignores him and, at the cabin’s entrance, mocks Pidge, “Is this not what you want? You’ll have him even after sunrise - your very own happy ending!”

“Katie!” Lance desperately cries out, the stricken look and the tear tracks on Pidge’s face making his chest ache. “We’ll be all right!”

She reaches for him, fighting the witch. “No, Lance—”

The witch shoves Pidge outside into the garden she so lovingly cultivated and slams the door in her face.

The ensuing silence, disrupted only by Lance’s heavy breathing and Pidge’s small fists pounding against the door, weighs heavy as the witch’s full attention falls on him. “I apologize for parting you this time,” she says, her thin lips twisting into an unpleasant smile. “I do not trust her not to interfere.”

Lance glares at her in the hope that looks can kill, only for the witch to cackle and reach into her tattered cloak. She barely glances at him, flicking a finger, as invisible tethers pull him against the wall, knocking the wind from his lungs and binding his wrists and ankles.

Lance has no defense against something he can’t see - against magic. What is he but a naive farm boy that fell in love with a witch’s cursed slave?

But he fights anyway, uselessly thrashing arms and legs though they don’t budge. He stares at the sword lying only feet away as if that will summon it to him, to fight the witch while he can still raise a hand against her to defend himself.

(Will his family - will Hunk? - forget him too?)

His heart pounds with resounding panic at a glint of metal in the witch’s hand. She prowls towards him, raising a silver cuff identical to the one around Pidge’s ankle, and says, “Relax, boy. This will be painless.”

“If you let Pidge go, I won’t fight you!” he snarls, feigning more confidence than he can muster.

The silver cuff glows as Haggar scoffs, “You think you _can_ fight me?”

“I’ll banish you from both realms!” Lance shouts. “You won’t hurt P—” His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, silencing him.

“Hush,” the witch says. “Your protests weary me.” But Lance barely hears her.

It takes all his willpower not to react as Pidge climbs through the cabin’s open window, falling softly to her hands and knees. She stands, taking a few steps towards them before crouching beside the discarded sword.

Lance’s eyes widen. Blood rushes past his ears. The witch’s bony fingers wrap around his ankle as she yanks his trouser leg up. Her touch is clammy and cold, and goosebumps rise on his skin.

But the silver cuff burns.

He winces, a pained gasp escaping him, but when Pidge’s wide, panicked eyes bore into him, he tries to smile.

She takes up the sword.

Lance doesn’t know what she can do against the witch while she’s cursed, but the sight of her even _attempting_ to fight fills him with hope. His smile no longer feels like too much of an effort, and he lets the witch’s humming enchantment wash over him without a care.

He _refuses_ to resign himself to this fate, to give up on Pidge.

“Do not despair of my mercy,” the witch says as she fastens the cuff around his ankle. A smirk slowly takes over her face. “I will set you both free before long, I suspect.”

Pidge freezes, her gaze meeting his over the witch’s shoulder right as Lance’s tongue regains its feeling. “R-really?” he says, hardly daring to believe it.

“You planted your seed in fertile soil last night,” the witch tells him before bursting into cackles.

Lance stares at her, uncomprehending. “What are you talking about? We didn’t garden, we—” His eyes feel like they’ll pop out of his skull as understanding hits him, heat rushing to his face. “How would you know…already?”

Behind her, Pidge recoils as if struck, hand falling to her abdomen while she furiously shakes her head.

“I know all that transpires in my domicile,” the witch claims, her grin turning malicious, “and it would do you well to remember if you wish to be freed with your lives intact.”

“Why?” Lance demands. “Why take me at all if you’ll just free me later?”

“So that you’ll understand the consequences of trespassing and seducing my slave,” she sneers, “but don’t fear.” He fails to twist away when her cold, bony fingers stroke his cheek. “I will happily award you both your freedom and even spare you the pain of parting when I wipe your memory clean. All I ask”—her breath is cool and rancid against his nose—”is for your precious firstborn child.”

“No!” he protests. He fights the hold she has on him, but of course it’s fruitless.

“Why not?” The witch’s gaze scans him, looking over his body almost critically and making his skin crawl. “You’re both young and virile and so much _in love_ ,” she mocks, “so there will surely be many—”

The witch gasps when the tip of a bloodstained sword bursts through her chest. “W-what…” Her wide eyes fall to it, some of that ugly yellow light fading and a drop of dark red liquid collecting at the corner of her lips as she reaches up to touch the blood soaking into her cloak.

She falls to her knees when Pidge pulls the sword from her, a weak glare meeting her steely gaze. “H-how?” she wheezes. “Th-the curse…”

“You overestimated your own strength,” Pidge accuses her, tone full of loathing. She steps between Lance and the witch, the tip of the sword under the witch’s chin despite a shake in her limbs. “I’m defending him and our future children, not myself.”

Blood bubbles out of the witch’s lips, her breath a low gurgle. “A…pity you were b-born human,” she says with a manic smile, her teeth black with blood. “A pity you were—are l-like me, so w-weak to a man’s…charms.”

The witch collapses in a puddle of her own blood.

One jerk of his limbs is all it takes for Lance to fight the fading spell that holds him against the wall. The instant his feet touch the floor, the cuff around his ankle falls away with a clatter, and he runs to Pidge.

The bloody sword slips from her grasp as she flings her arms around him and buries her face in his shirt before a sob bursts from her. He holds her just as tightly as the wave of relief crashes over him and his eyes burn with tears. They fall to their knees, heedless of the blood staining the cabin’s wooden floor.

Lance loses track of how long they simply clutch each other, trembling. He runs his fingers through Pidge’s hair, her hands gripping the back of his shirt. But his heart beats steadily, alive and free, and when he presses his lips to her neck he feels her pulse thrumming with that same life force.

They’re _free_.

Pidge finds her silver cuff in two pieces, with jagged ridges in the metal. He helps her to her feet and finds his own. Together they collect her belongings, all the gifts he’s given her over the years and a single change of clothes, into his pack before leaving the cabin.

Pidge chucks the remains of her cuff over the garden fence with a shout. She stands at the entrance, her spine stiffening before she turns to him.

A smile pushes at his lips. “Are you ready?” he asks her.

Pidge nods and grasps one of his hands in both of hers. Her eyes slip shut, her face serene as she walks backwards and past the garden gate.

A radiant and relieved smile blooms over her face as he joins her beyond the garden, as they walk into the trees for the first time together. Pidge exhales, her eyes fluttering open and meeting his and as she exhales in relief the delight on her face takes his breath away.

She raises his hand to her face.“Lance,” she murmurs with her lips brushing his knuckles, her gaze so tender he feels the warmth of it to his core, “take me home.”

(They don’t look back.)

**Author's Note:**

> Lance after introducing Pidge to his family: Now I bet you're all wondering what these on my face are...  
> Veronica: Your nose? I've told you before it's not off-center  
> Lance: What? No! These...markings things that are totally not magical in origin...  
> Veronica: What markings?  
> Lance: These...on my cheeks?  
> Pidge: Oh I forgot to tell you they disappeared as soon as we crossed the garden fence  
> Lance: ...quiznak  
> Veronica: ...what
> 
> ***
> 
> congrats if you read through this all in one sitting!! leave a comment if you liked it?? <3
> 
>  **edit:** and omg the wonderful [a-haunted-sock](https://a-haunted-sock.tumblr.com/) did [this amazing artwork](https://a-haunted-sock.tumblr.com/post/184326434855/a-haunted-sock-well-meet-by-moonlight) eep


End file.
